Happier agents make better collection calls — National Recovery Associates

How National Recovery Associates moved QA from manual sample-based review to real-time, full-coverage coaching — and built an agent-performance flywheel that lifts both recovery rates and compliance at the same time.

National Recovery Associates (NRA), a U.S. master servicer in the debt recovery space, deployed Sedric to replace a manual, sample-based QA process with continuous, real-time review and coaching across every collections call. The result is a tighter feedback loop between managers and agents, sustained month-over-month improvement in agent QA scores, and a more defensible compliance posture across both standard and legal collections.

The deployment has compressed the gap between a problematic call and a teachable moment from days to minutes, eliminated the human-error gaps inherent in manual spot-checking, and lifted the floor on what NRA’s managers can verifiably attest to about their staff’s performance and adherence.

“The deployment of Sedric has enabled NRA to increase the quality and the uniformity of the quality of the engagements that we’re having with consumers because we’re able to review and monitor a lot more calls — and we’re able to do it with higher accuracy, quicker and in real time.” — Jonathan Goldberg, President, National Recovery Associates

About National Recovery Associates

National Recovery Associates is a U.S.-based master servicer in the debt recovery space, operating both standard and legal collections programs on behalf of its creditor clients. Like all ARM operators, NRA runs a conduct-regulated business where every consumer conversation has to clear two bars at once: convert the contact into a recovery outcome, and stay inside a tightening compliance perimeter on every call.

The business challenge

NRA’s pre-Sedric QA model was sample-based, retrospective and labor-intensive. A dedicated team of QA analysts spent most of their working day manually listening to calls — a process that absorbed analyst capacity, left the majority of consumer conversations un-reviewed, and inevitably missed the small, in-the-moment nuances that drive both compliance risk and lost recovery opportunity.

“Before Sedric, our QA process was very manual,” said Jonathan Goldberg. “We had a whole team of QA agents who spent almost their entire day every day listening to calls. It allowed too much room for human error in terms of missing those small nuances that can happen in a conversation with a consumer.”

The constraint was structural. Human attention is a fixed resource; call volume is not. Closing the coverage gap with more analysts was uneconomic. Closing it without more analysts required a different operating model.

Why Sedric

NRA deployed Sedric to move QA from sample-based, post-hoc review to continuous, AI-driven monitoring and real-time coaching across the full population of agent–consumer conversations. Four properties of the platform mattered most for NRA’s deployment.

1. Full-coverage review

Continuous monitoring of every call, with higher accuracy and faster turnaround than any manual sampling regime could achieve. Coverage is no longer a function of analyst headcount.

2. Real-time agent feedback

Live in-call and immediately post-call coaching, compressing the lag between a missed nuance and a corrective conversation. Agents are trained earlier and more concretely than the prior model permitted.

3. Manager oversight at scale

Team leads and supervisors now have direct, real-time visibility into the staff they’re responsible for, rather than periodic analyst-curated samples. Feedback to agents is faster and more specific as a result.

4. Customer-shaped delivery

Sedric calibrated to NRA’s policies, programs (standard and legal collections), and operating model, rather than the other way around.

“What we found with Sedric is there’s no box that we need to fit into. They’re building the box around us.” — Jonathan Goldberg, President, National Recovery Associates

Outcomes

With Sedric in production, NRA has measurably moved both halves of the call-floor equation — unit economics on recovery, and demonstrable adherence on compliance — while simultaneously reducing manual QA workload.

Agent performance and incentives

Agent QA scores have continued to improve month-over-month since deployment, with a direct positive impact on agent earnings, motivation and retention. The flywheel is straightforward: real-time coaching lifts scores, higher scores lift earnings, and better-paid agents handle better calls.

“Our agent scores are actually continuing to improve and increase month-over-month,” Goldberg said. “And with those scores going up, they’re all earning more, which makes them more motivated and happier employees. Happier agents make for better collection calls and higher recovery rates.”

Manager visibility and coaching cadence

NRA managers can now provide feedback to their agents “much more quickly and more concretely,” operating from a population-level view of staff performance rather than an analyst-curated sample. Coaching has moved from a periodic event to an embedded part of how the floor runs.

Client outcomes

Better recovery rates are matched by a stronger compliance position, addressing both halves of what NRA’s creditor clients evaluate when they review master-servicer performance.

“Our clients are also really happy because they’re seeing better results, not just from our recovery rates, but also from our compliance standards,” Goldberg said.

Compliance and oversight

NRA has raised the bar internally on what it expects from agents and lifted the share of its staff demonstrably adhering to those expectations to 100%, with the evidence trail to support it under client and regulatory scrutiny.

“I’d recommend Sedric really to anybody who’s working in a space where you have people talking to people. There’s a higher uniformity and we’ve moved the bar much higher in terms of what we expect and how much of our staff is 100% of the time adhering to our expectations.” — Jonathan Goldberg, President, National Recovery Associates