MaxContact launches Auto QA amid FCA compliance gap

MaxContact has launched Auto QA for contact centres as its research points to a gap between confidence and evidence in FCA-regulated businesses.

A survey found that 85.6% of FCA-regulated businesses believed they could provide evidence of fair treatment if a regulator reviewed their calls. Yet 54% of UK contact centre managers and directors said they had found a compliance breach outside their routine quality assurance sample. Of that group, 16% had discovered breaches more than once.

The findings suggest many firms still rely on sampling methods that can miss problems in customer conversations, particularly in sectors where businesses are expected to keep clear records of decision-making and customer treatment. The research covered 300 managers and directors in UK contact centres, including 285 respondents who said their organisation was regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The results also pointed to commercial consequences. Half of organisations said they had lost a sale, contract or customer because of a compliance issue in the past 12 months, and 18% said it had happened more than once.

Research findings

The polling was split evenly across sales, customer care or technical support, and debt collection roles. This suggests the issue is not confined to one part of the contact centre industry, but spans functions where customer interactions can carry regulatory and financial risks.

In regulated markets, the distinction between confidence in a process and documentary evidence of what happened in an interaction has become more important. Contact centres are under pressure to identify vulnerable customers, monitor conduct, and show that customer outcomes are being assessed consistently.

Ben Booth, Chief Executive Officer at MaxContact, said: "Businesses should never make decisions based on confidence without having the evidence to back it up. Our research tells a worrying story: many organisations believe they are doing enough, yet they are recording compliance breaches outside their routine reviews."

He added: "This should be a wake-up call for companies still relying on small sample sizes to assess compliance and customer outcomes. It's not enough to be confident in your processes. You must be able to show that you are checking every interaction to fully stand up to regulatory scrutiny."

Product launch

Against that backdrop, MaxContact has introduced Auto QA as an add-on within its Conversation Analytics offering. The product is designed to let businesses assess every customer interaction rather than rely on manual checks across a limited sample of calls.

The system applies an organisation's own quality assurance scorecard to each interaction and assesses questions against transcript-linked evidence. It also provides visibility into vulnerability indicators, supports investigations into potential concerns, and can trigger automated escalations.

The approach is intended to reduce the burden on contact centre team leaders, who often combine manual monitoring with several systems when carrying out quality assurance work. The broader aim is to give businesses a fuller record of compliance, service quality, and customer outcomes across all conversations.

The launch reflects a wider shift in contact centre operations towards automated review tools in regulated settings. Businesses in financial services and adjacent sectors face increasing scrutiny over how they monitor customer conversations and how quickly they can retrieve evidence when concerns arise.

Booth said the scale of undiscovered breaches identified in the survey showed that missed issues were no longer hypothetical. "For years, organisations have accepted sampling as the only practical way to manage quality assurance. But the industry is now operating in a very different environment. When more than half of contact centre professionals have uncovered compliance breaches outside their routine sample, it's clear this is no longer a theoretical risk. Businesses are already experiencing the commercial consequences of compliance issues that may previously have gone unnoticed. They must move beyond confidence in their processes and be able to show evidence that they consistently treat customers fairly. This is going to become increasingly important as regulatory expectations continue to change."