Gordon Beck Wins Award for Best Speech of 2014

The Telecom Risk Management Association, better known as “TRMA”, is an exclusive and well known Association dedicated to the mitigation of risk amongst the country’s wide range of Telecom organizations.  Twice a year, these organizations meet with their suppliers and an elite group of Business Affiliates in the collections space to discuss industry trends that range from fraud procedures to the most effective collection practices.

Each TRMA conference is filled with a wide array of presenters that prepare speeches and presentations on best practices to help these large telco organizations lessen their exposure from fraud and unpaid receivables.

Every year at the Spring Conference, the TRMA board presents awards to those Business Affiliates that made special contributions to the overall objectives of the Association the previous year.  At the end of the awards presentations, the President of the TRMA gives out the annual “President’s Award” for the best speech and presentation out of the nearly 30 presentations delivered at the two conferences from the previous year.  The award is determined by the board after reviewing the voting member’s and Business Affiliate’s reviews of each presentation.  The Board votes on the presentations with the best reviews to determine which speech was the most effective, dynamic and engaging in order to come up with the winner.

This year TRMA’s president, Bridget Carson of Sprint, presented the award to Gordon Beck of Diversified Consultants, Inc.   Gordon, the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer of DCI, presented “How you say it, makes them pay it” which was a full, cradle to grave presentation on a very new technology in the collection industry called Emotional Analytics.  Unlike Speech Analytics, Emotional Analytics focused not on what the agent is saying, but how they are saying it. The technology analyzes vocal intonations to determine emotions, moods, attitude and personality of the speaker.  

This new technology was captivating to the audience because it is the first time that anyone in the communications industry has been able to harness voice characteristics other than volume or specific words to indicate whether or not the agents are being enthusiastic, energetic and motivating on the phone.

Gordon explains it futher, “we live and work in a society of rules and regulations and with regulation comes a uniform way of doing things.  Where in the past the collectors that were most creative with their wording were the best in the industry, now that dynamic has changed.  Now that regulation has a strangle hold on our business, most agencies are saying the same thing as the next.  What makes a great agency now are those that can say the same things as the next, but say it with more passion, more energy and more enthusiasm so the consumer has a collections experience that they would never expect.  It is amazing that we can now harness this information on a massive scale.”

Gordon has a reputation as one of the most passionate and powerful speakers and motivators in the entire collections industry, doing many presentations for TRMA in the past, but this year was extra special Beck says, “winning this award was a dream come true.  To receive this in front of my collection industry fraternity of clients, vendors and competition was the ultimate compliment since they are the ones that helped decide the winner. But to be able to win it on a topic that I am so passionate about, which is giving the consumer an amazing experience on the phone, it was one of the best days of my professional career.”

But Beck stopped short of taking all of the credit when he said, ” My right hand man and SVP, Michael Anna, made this all possible.  It’s one thing to be a dynamic speaker, but to do a presentation with a visual aid or power point that is out of this world guarantees to captivate the crowd and capture and keep the attention of the audience.  Michael put together a presentation that was nothing short of spectacular as it was embedded with recordings, graphics and animations that made the delivery of the speech even more fun to do.  It is all about team in this industry and this was a classic example of a great duo collectively providing a great presentation.”

Gordon operates DCI in Jacksonville who services telecom debt specifically from 3 locations nationwide, including Portland, Oregon. DCI knows the value that great customer service brings to an industry with an already negative stereotype.  DCI has been awarded on many occasions for their customer first approach, including the National Agency of the Year in 2009 at the DCS conference and 18 Agency of the Year Awards from their telecom client base over the past 10 years. Of all of the awards and accolades, including being on the cover of the Collection Advisor Magazine twice in the last 18 months, Gordon claims this is his proudest moment because of the prestige of the Association and the fact that he was able to achieve this award in the presence of all of the people he works closest with.

Here are some reviews from TRMA Voting Members:

“Gordon once again did a great job of sharing his personal insights and first-hand experience with an innovative technology that can be used by many in our Industry.  And did it in his usual passionate, energetic and transparent way.”

- Bill Froehlich, OCA Manager, AT&T

I thought your presentation on emotional analytics validated why DCI is a performance leader in the collection industry.  You passion and insight on how agencies can gather powerful emotional call data to improve call quality that leads to enhanced performance results was absolutely exceptional.   Best presentation of the 2015 TRMA conference season without a doubt! 

 -Will Joyner, Business Operations Manager, 1st and 3rd Party Collections & Bankruptcy, Billing and Credit, Dish Network

I was delighted to be there to see Gordon Beck receive TRMA’s Presidents Award for 2014.  Not only is he a commanding and dynamic speaker but it’s safe to say few people bring more passion and work harder to change the public perception of our industry than Gordon and DCI.  Well-deserved recognition!”

-Jeff Hill, Senior Relationship Manager, T-Mobile

About TRMA: TRMA is an industry forum for risk management professionals from the Telecommunications, Pay TV, Utility, Waste Management and other industries to collaborate, understand, and share best practices related to acquisition risk management, customer life-cycle and uncollectible debt issues among its members. TRMA is a professional resource that is sought by industry leaders. It is a growing, diverse and global organization that delivers quality information forums and tools relevant to our members’ changing and dynamic industries. The mission of TRMA is to promote cooperation within the Telecommunication industry to effectively balance risk while reducing fraud and uncollectibles for the benefit of our industry and paying customers.