Equivo has launched Equivo Vision™, a proprietary AI-powered quality assurance capability built to transform how body-worn video is analysed across field operations. By analysing both audio and video, Equivo Vision™ enables broader QA coverage, faster analysis and deeper insight into customer interactions, while still retaining human judgement at the centre of decision-making.
Body-worn video has long played an important role in Equivo’s field operations. It provides transparency, supports accountability, protects customers and colleagues and creates an objective record of an interaction when further review is required.
But we believe its value can go much further than simply recording what happened.
The challenge with body-worn video has never been the amount of information available. It is the practical ability to review and understand that information at scale. A twenty-minute interaction takes time for a quality analyst to assess properly. Across thousands of interactions, there is inevitably a limit to how much footage can be reviewed manually.
This is why quality assurance has traditionally relied on sampling. Sampling remains valuable, but by its nature it provides visibility only over the interactions selected for review. Outside that sample could be examples of excellent customer service, opportunities for coaching, issues requiring further attention or important indicators that a customer may need additional support.
Equivo Vision™ changes what is possible.
From recorded footage to quality intelligence
Using artificial intelligence, Equivo Vision™ analyses both the audio and visual elements of relevant body-worn interactions, allowing us to move towards 100% QA coverage rather than limiting review to what a human quality assurance team can physically review.
The objective is not simply to process more footage. It is to turn a much greater proportion of the information already captured during field activity into meaningful quality intelligence.
Equivo Vision™ can help surface interactions containing indicators relating to customer treatment, vulnerability, conduct, compliance and overall interaction quality. Those insights can then help our quality, compliance and operations teams to identify where closer attention may be required.
The result is a significant evolution in our approach to quality assurance: faster analysis, broader coverage and deeper insight.
Greater visibility where it matters most
One of the most important applications of this increased coverage is vulnerability.
Customers do not always explicitly disclose that they are experiencing difficult or vulnerable circumstances. Important indicators may emerge through conversation, behaviour or the wider circumstances encountered during an interaction.
Increasing quality assurance coverage gives us greater opportunity to surface interactions that may require closer human review, rather than potentially important information remaining within footage that was never selected as part of a manual sample.
Equivo Vision™ does not make final judgements about a customer’s circumstances. Instead, it helps bring relevant information to the attention of experienced quality assurance experts who can assess the interaction in context and determine what action, if any, is appropriate.
This also complements our wider approach to vulnerability, including our award winning VulneraTrack™, helping us develop a more connected understanding of customer circumstances throughout the recovery and resolution journey.
Evolving with regulatory expectations
The regulatory environment around customer outcomes continues to evolve. Under the FCA’s Consumer Duty, firms are expected not only to have appropriate policies and controls in place, but to assess, understand and evidence the outcomes their customers are actually receiving.
That places increasing importance on the quality and depth of information available throughout the customer journey. It also means our approach to quality assurance must continue to evolve alongside regulatory expectations, including how we evidence activity undertaken on behalf of our clients.
Equivo Vision™ enables us to analyse a much broader volume of real customer interactions, creating richer quality intelligence around customer treatment, conduct, vulnerability, compliance and overall interaction quality.
Rather than relying predominantly on sampled interactions to evidence performance, broader QA coverage gives our teams greater visibility of what is happening across field activity and strengthens the information available to support oversight, governance and continuous improvement.
This aligns closely with the direction of Consumer Duty and the wider evolution of evidencing requirements. As expectations around monitoring customer outcomes become more refined, organisations need increasingly meaningful evidence of how those outcomes are being delivered in practice.
By investing in technology such as Equivo Vision™, we are continuing to evolve our capability alongside that changing regulatory landscape, helping provide our clients with stronger assurance over interactions carried out on their behalf and a deeper evidence base around the treatment and outcomes of their customers.
Our approach is not simply about meeting minimum regulatory expectations. It is about using technology to deliver greater visibility, stronger governance and continuous improvement, while helping our clients maintain confidence in the quality and consistency of the customer outcomes being delivered on their behalf.
AI that strengthens human expertise
Our approach to artificial intelligence is based on a simple principle: technology should strengthen professional judgement, not replace it.
AI gives us the ability to analyse information consistently and at a scale that would be impossible through manual review alone. Our people provide the context, experience and judgement required to understand what that information means.
That distinction is fundamental to Equivo Vision™.
The technology can help surface interactions requiring attention, but experienced teams remain responsible for reviewing those interactions and deciding what happens next. Equally, increased coverage can help identify examples of excellent performance and good customer engagement, creating further opportunities for recognition, training and continuous improvement.
Quality assurance should help an organisation understand what is happening across its operations and continually improve what happens next.
Stronger assurance for our clients
The development also has clear benefits for the organisations that trust Equivo to interact with their customers.
Broader quality assurance coverage provides greater visibility of field activity carried out on their behalf and creates a stronger evidence base around customer treatment, operational standards and outcomes.
Rather than quality intelligence being drawn predominantly from selected interactions, Equivo Vision™ enables a much wider range of activity to contribute to our understanding of performance. That creates greater transparency for our own teams, stronger governance and oversight for our clients, and more opportunities to identify where action or improvement may be required.
This is increasingly important in an environment where organisations need to understand not simply whether the right policies and processes exist, but whether those standards are being delivered consistently in real customer interactions. By turning a wider range of interactions into quality intelligence, Equivo Vision™ strengthens the oversight and assurance we can provide to our clients while helping our own teams continually improve the way we operate.
The next evolution of Equivo technology
Equivo Vision™ is not an isolated AI project. It forms part of our wider connected technology ecosystem, which has continued to evolve around the needs of customers, clients and our operational teams.
Our approach is to use technology where it can create greater visibility, intelligence and consistency, while ensuring experienced people remain at the heart of important decisions.
Body-worn video will continue to provide an essential record of field interactions. Equivo Vision™ takes its potential further by allowing the information within those interactions to contribute continuously to quality assurance, vulnerability management, governance and operational improvement.
Your main contact:
John is Founder & Director, and leads Equivo’s Collections & Field Division has responsibility for operations and service delivery for collections activity across the business. John always challenges standard industry practice while keeping fully abreast of regulatory requirements, beliefs that are core to Equivo’s operation.
