ST. GEORGE, UT — TCN, Inc., a global provider of a comprehensive
cloud-based call center platform for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and
collection agencies, today announced the launch of “The Complete
Guide to Managing Call Center Agents,” a free online resource
for managers.

“Managing a busy
call center is no easy task, which is why we’ve created our online guide to
help managers unlock their agents’ soft and hard skills that are essential to
developing powerful customer experiences,” said McKay Bird, chief marketing
officer at TCN. “Call center agents are an integral part of customer service
and it’s vital that they feel valued and acknowledged in order to best serve
customers.”

TCN’s online guide
offers numerous strategies and best practices for keeping call center agents
engaged and working efficiently. These include onboarding and ongoing training
of agents, leveraging automated customer service technology tools, listening to
agent feedback, nurturing agent/customer relationships, offering performance
incentives, exceeding customer expectations and managing remote and WFH agents.

The guide also
takes a deep dive into specific call center software tools, such as Workforce
Optimization and Workforce Management, that can assist with agent coaching and
agent performance, including the use of Voice and Speech Analytics, Business
Intelligence and KPI data. It also highlights the power of gamification in the
call center workplace to enhance the daily workflow of call center agents, how
to use post-call surveys of customers to generate constructive feedback and how
to manage compliance issues, especially the regulations of the Telephone
Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), through the training and management of agents.

TCN’s “The
Complete Guide to Managing Call Center Agents” adds to the company’s wealth of
informational resources on its website for call centers and contact centers,
including “Understanding STIR/SHAKEN,” a business guide to the new FCC framework
for combating illegal caller ID spoofing and “The Complete Guide To TCPA
Compliance,” as well as case studies, informational videos and white papers.

About TCN, Inc.

TCN is a global provider of a comprehensive, cloud-based call center platform
for enterprises, contact centers, business process outsourcing firms (BPOs) and
collection agencies. Founded in 1999, TCN combines a deep understanding of the
needs of call centers with a unique approach to pricing – no contracts, monthly
minimums or maintenance fees – that supports rapid scaling and instant
flexibility to changing business needs. TCN’s flagship platform for contact
centers, TCN Operator, features a holistic set of easy-to-use, automated agent
tools and advanced apps for omnichannel communications, workforce engagement,
compliance & data management, integration & automation, intelligence,
reporting & analytics and collaboration & accessibility. Its suite of
compliance tools helps businesses meet the requirements of the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act (TCPA) and other state and federal regulations, including new
and updated debt collection rules issued by the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau. TCN Operator integrates seamlessly with leading APIs and is accessible
to agents with visual impairments. TCN is trusted by Fortune 500 companies and
enterprises of all sizes in multiple industries in many countries. For more information , visithttps://www.tcn.com/ and follow on Twitter @tcn.

MINNETONKA, Minn. — Central Portfolio Control, Inc (CPC) hosted a Summer Party in July to celebrate employee
achievement, enjoy time with family and friends, and raise money for another
great cause. The Minnetonka, MN-based collection agency was able to donate over
$1,700 for St.
Jude Children’s Research Hospital (St. Jude’s) from the party’s dunk tank donations to support children
undergoing treatment for disease. Another in a succession of charity-driven employee events, the team raised money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital
while they and their families enjoyed games and food from local favorite,
Veteran-owned, GI Joe’s food truck.

Fun For A Good Cause

Employees gave a $5 donation to St. Jude’s for three chances to
dunk one of five members of CPC’s executive management team in the dunk tank.
Spectators enjoyed snow cones and a good laugh for a good cause. “I didn’t
think we had so many great pitchers on our team,” jokes Central Portfolio Control’s President, Alicia Lesher, “we had so much fun bringing everyone together and our
team always finds a way to give back. Community service is
part of who we are; I’m proud to be part of such a compassionate corporate
culture.”

Charity-Centric Culture

Service is a common theme at CPC, and the employees dedicate
themselves to not only serving the local community but also providing
superior customer service to clients and their customers. The Company values
align with the great work that organizations, like St. Jude, do for those in
need. Some CPC employees have been personally impacted by childhood disease and
the medical costs associated with healthcare. The team rallies together to
support charitable organizations that team members are passionate about,
keeping them very engaged with each other and our community. Other charities
that CPC supports include Sharing & Caring Hands, the Ronald McDonald House at Children’s Minneapolis Hospital, and more.

Employee Engagement 

Central Portfolio Control prioritizes the well-being and
satisfaction of its employees. They are
the core of the operation and the Company’s strong corporate culture of
professionalism, performance, and compliance. CPC has an unwavering commitment
to integrity, ethical business practices, and employee engagement. Helping
employees find additional happiness by giving back to organizations of their
choice, they have carefully built a company culture that cultivates success and employee empowerment. 

CPC is proud to support St. Jude and contribute to finding cures
and saving children, and they encourage others to join them in their support.
If you would like to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, please
visit stjude.org.

About St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

St. Jude Children’s
Research Hospital, founded in 1962, is a
pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children’s catastrophic
diseases, particularly leukemia and other cancers. The hospital costs about
$2.8 million a day to run, but patients are not charged for their care. It is headquartered
in Memphis, Tennessee with eight affiliate clinics across the U.S. It is a
nonprofit medical corporation designated as a 501c tax-exempt organization by
the Internal Revenue Service. St. Jude treats infants, children, teens, and
young adults up to age 21 and for some conditions, age 25.

About Central Portfolio Control

Headquartered in Minnetonka, MN, Central
Portfolio Control (CPC) is a full service
and nationally licensed collection agency focused on the recovery of distressed
accounts receivable. CPC is very active in supporting charitable organizations
that are meaningful to team members and allowing them to maintain an
exceptional corporate culture. Since being founded in 1998, our team has continued
to grow the company and provide top-quality services to our clients and jobs to
our local community. 

In an appeal that can only be described at best as a head-scratcher,
in its attempt to pursue a bona fide error defense without producing a written procedure,
a debt collector managed only to give consumers a path forward on Article III
standing issues. On August 17, 2021, in
the case of Lupia v. Mericredit Inc. (Case #20-1294, 10^th Cir),
the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held (1) a single unanswered telephone call/voicemail
made to a consumer is sufficient for standing, and (2) a bona fide error
defense requires the production of procedures.

The Background:

The facts of the Lupia case are simple: Mericredit
Inc. (Mericredit) received a dispute, cease and desist letter from the consumer. The next day, before Mericredit processed the letter,
it called the consumer again and left a voicemail when she did not pick up the
call. This phone call is the sole basis for the consumer’s Debt Collection Practices
Act (FDCPA) suit. In response, Mericredit alleged that the consumer
lacked Article III standing to bring the suit and raised a bona fide error
defense.

Although Mericredit claimed that calling the consumer after
she sent a dispute and cease and desist letter resulted from a bona fide error,
it failed to provide a mail handling procedure. At the discovery phase, Mericredit claimed
that such policies “do not exist.” At the summary judgment phase, it described
its mail procedure generally and submitted an affidavit from its Senior Vice
President of Operations that indicated it generally takes about three days to
enter cease and desists into their system.

Ultimately, the district court granted summary judgment in the
consumer’s favor and, despite its failure to produce any written procedures in support of its bona fide error defense, Mericredit filed an appeal. Interestingly,
although the August 17, 2021, opinion focuses heavily on standing, the appellant
brief filed by Mericredit was based on the bona fide error defense,
not the standing issue.

Standing:

Although Ms. Lupia did not pick up the phone, did not speak
to a collector, and did not allege specific damages, the Tenth Circuit held receiving the call and voicemail was
sufficient for Article III standing. The court cited Spokeo v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016) for
the principle that “concrete” doesn’t necessarily mean “tangible” and then looked
to whether an intangible harm has a close relationship to a harm that has traditionally
been regarded as providing a basis for a lawsuit in English or American courts. Deciding whether an injury is similar to
harms that have traditionally provided a basis for a lawsuit does not require a
finding that the harm is to the same degree as that which has been historically
required. Instead, the analysis is whether the alleged harm “poses the same
kind of harm.”

In its analysis, the court focused on the tort of intrusion
upon seclusion, which protects people against those who intrude on their solitude.
According to the court, the unwanted call and voicemail left for the consumer
after she sent a dispute and a request to cease calls is an injury that bears “a
close relationship” to this historic cause of action, even where no specific damages
were alleged. According to the court, since the harm alleged by Ms. Lupia (i.e. receiving unwanted calls after she asked for them to stop) bore a close relationship to the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, this case is factually distinguishable from Transunion v. Ramirez in which the plaintiffs who lacked standing were unable to show that their harms tracked the requirements for a traditionally recognized cause of action. 

Regarding the flurry
of Seventh Circuit cases regarding standing, the court noted that those
cases preceded the SCOTUS decision in TransUnion, and none of them involved telephone calls received after a dispute.
The only case to address a call  to a consumer after a cease and desist request was sent to the
debt collector, dealt with complaints of “stress
and confusion” not an invasion of privacy.  

The Bona Fide Error Defense:

Mericredit did not deny calling the consumer; instead
Mericredit argued the call was the result of a bona fide error. It is well
settled legal doctrine that to prevail on a bona fide error defense a debt
collector must show that the violation (1) was unintentional; (2) a bona fide
error; and (3) made despite procedures reasonably adapted to avoid the
violation. Despite the clear requirements of element number three, Mericredit
moved forward on this defense without having any written procedures. As
mentioned above, the district court didn’t buy it and Mericredit’s bona fide
error defense was unsuccessful.

The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently reversed a trial court order
granting summary judgment in favor of the defendant on a consumer’s claim that
the defendant violated the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

In so ruling, the Sixth Circuit
held that, even though the defendant’s failure to properly identify itself in
the phone calls confused the plaintiff and led to him sending a cease and
desist request to the wrong entity, confusion by itself does not establish “a
concrete injury for Article III purposes.” 

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Therefore, the Court held, the
consumer did not suffer “more than a bare procedural violation of the FDCPA” as
required to establish the standing necessary to pursue his claims. 

A copy of
the opinion in Ward v. Nat’l Patient Account
Servs. is available at:  Link to Opinion.

The
consumer incurred medical expenses after treatment with a medical provider. The
provider hired a company to collect the debt. The collection company allegedly
left several voice messages while attempting to collect the debt.

The consumer filed suit alleging
claims against the collection company (“defendant”) under the FDCPA arising out
of the alleged voice mails where the defendant did not accurately identify
itself.  The consumer claimed that the defendant’s failure to accurately
provide its correct legal name confused him.  As a result of this
confusion, the consumer allegedly sent a cease and desist letter to the wrong
entity.

Specifically, the consumer
claimed that the defendant violated section 1692d(6) of the FDCPA, which
provides that a “debt collector may not engage in any conduct the natural
consequence of which is to harass, oppress, or abuse any person in connection
with the collection of a debt[,]” including the “placement of telephone calls
without meaningful disclosure of the caller’s identity.” 

The consumer also claimed that
the defendant violated section 1692e(14), which provides that a “debt collector
may not use any false, deceptive, or misleading representation or means in
connection with the collection of any debt[,]” including “us[ing] any
business, company, or organization name other than the true name of the debt
collector’s business, company, or organization.”

The defendant moved for summary
judgment arguing that it did not meet the definition of a debt collector under
the FDCPA, and the trial court granted the motion. This appeal followed.

On appeal, the defendant argued
that the consumer lacked Article III standing. Although the defendant did not
raise this issue with the trial court, the Sixth Circuit observed that it has
an independent obligation to determine its jurisdiction to hear an appeal.

As you may recall, standing
requires that the “plaintiff must have (1) suffered an injury in fact, (2) that
is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and (3) that is
likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” The plaintiff bears
the burden of setting forth facts that demonstrate standing. 

The issue in this appeal was
whether the plaintiff suffered an injury in fact. This requires that “the
injury must be (1) particularized and (2) concrete.”  The dispute here
concerned whether the consumer suffered a concrete injury. 

The consumer claimed that he
suffered a concrete injury for two reasons. First, he argued that the violation
of his procedural rights under the FDCPA established a concrete injury. Second,
he claimed that the confusion caused by the phone calls and expense of the
counsel that he retained demonstrated that he suffered a concrete injury. 

The Sixth Circuit observed that
in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the
Supreme Court of the United States recently clarified what is required to show
that a violation of a procedural right established a concrete injury and, as a
result, the plaintiff “must show either that the procedural harm itself is a
concrete injury of the sort traditionally recognized or that the procedural
violations caused an independent concrete injury.”  After conducting that
inquiry here, the Sixth Circuit concluded that the consumer lacked Article III
standing to pursue his alleged claims.

As a result of the alleged FDCPA
violations the consumer argued that the FDCPA created an enforceable right to
know who is calling about a debt because the defendant’s failure to correctly
provide its full legal name concretely harmed him. The consumer further argued
that this harm is closely related to the invasion of privacy harm that most
states recognize. 

The Sixth Circuit rejected the
consumer’s argument because the defendant’s alleged failure to disclose its
full legal name does not resemble a traditional harm “regarded as providing a
basis for a lawsuit,” as required to establish a concrete injury. 

The Sixth Circuit acknowledged
that most states recognize actions to enforce the right of privacy, including
“the tort of intrusion upon one’s right to seclusion.” However, the Court noted
that not receiving full and complete information about the name of a defendant does
not closely resemble the tort of intrusion upon seclusion because this common
law tort typically requires proof that the defendant “intentionally intrude[d],
physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his
privacy affairs or concerns.”

The consumer’s alleged harm did
not impact his privacy.  Instead, it merely confused him. The defendant
did not share his private information with a third party or publicize his
private information. Thus, the Sixth Circuit found that the consumer’s claimed
harm did “not bear a close relationship to traditional harms” and the consumer
could not establish standing based solely upon the alleged statutory
violations.

The consumer advanced several
additional reasons for why he suffered a concrete injury that stemmed from the
alleged statutory violation. First, the consumer claimed that the defendant’s
failure to properly identify itself in the phone calls confused him and led to
him sending a cease and desist request to the wrong entity. The Sixth Circuit
rejected this argument, because confusion by itself does not establish “a
concrete injury for Article III purposes.”

The consumer next argued that he
retained counsel to stop the calls and that this action constitutes a concrete
harm flowing from the statutory violation. The Sixth Circuit disagreed that the
expense of hiring counsel established a concrete harm because applying this
“logic to any plaintiff who hires counsel to affirmatively pursue a claim would
nullify the limits created under Article III.”

Finally, the consumer argued that
an additional call that he received after he sent his cease and desist letter
to the wrong entity concretely harmed him. The Sixth Circuit declined to
consider this argument because the consumer did not clearly allege in his
complaint that he received another phone call after sending the cease and
desist letter or that this additional call harmed him.

Thus, the Sixth Circuit held that
consumer did not demonstrate that he suffered “more than a bare procedural
violation of the FDCPA” and that he lacked Article III standing to pursue his
claims. Therefore, the Sixth Circuit vacated the trial court’s order granting
summary judgment and remanded the case to be dismissed without prejudice for
lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On April 8, 2021, the Commissioner initiated a rulemaking to
adopt regulations related to the requirements for licensure under the Debt
Collection Licensing Act (“DCLA”). The Commissioner is now considering a second
rulemaking to adopt regulations related to other provisions of the
DCLA, including its scope, annual reports, and bond amounts.

The Commissioner invites interested parties to provide input in
developing regulations related to these topics and has formulated questions to
assist such parties in providing this input. The Commissioner also invites
interested parties to provide example language for regulations related to these
topics.

The invitation and questions may be found here: PRO 05-21 – Invitation for Comments on Proposed Second Rulemaking Under the Debt Collection licensing Act (PDF)

The deadline to submit comments under this invitation is Monday,
October 5, 2021.

NOTE: To ensure you receive future notices about the second DCLA
rulemaking,  visit www.dfpi.ca.gov and
select the “Subscribe” button at the bottom of the page. After logging in,
select the “Debt Collection Licensing Act Regulations” list under the
“Regulations” category.