The challenge
A Department of Education settlement put DeVry University under intense compliance scrutiny — and the stakes were high. Every prospective-student conversation now carried regulatory weight, and the volume made that nearly impossible to manage manually.
Recruiters were fielding more than 40,000 messages a day, each one subject to complex, nuanced compliance rules. Existing tools weren't built for that kind of precision. DeVry's phrase-matching system flagged too many false positives while still missing the contextual violations that mattered most.
Compliance teams could spot-check only a fraction of conversations, leaving risk exposure unaddressed. Manual review cycles were slow, resource-intensive and couldn't scale to the volume DeVry needed to cover.
The TELUS Digital solution
TELUS Digital built an AI-driven compliance agent that reviews every SMS and messaging session in real time, using contextual analysis rather than static keyword matching.
The agent runs on a rule-rich prompt template, giving it the nuance to interpret conversations the way a human reviewer would, but at machine scale. Apex batch processes handle high-volume SMS evaluations, while trigger-based flows manage real-time messaging sessions as they happen.
When the system flags a violation, it automatically creates a custom escalation record that includes a standardized reason and detailed rationale. Those records are enriched with contextual data, including the representative, prospect and relevant message metadata so that compliance teams get full context without manually digging through transcripts.
The results
DeVry moved from partial, manual spot checks to full, end-to-end coverage of every prospect communication. That shift changed what compliance teams could actually do with their time. Here's what that shift made possible:
- Achieved complete coverage of all prospect communications, eliminating reliance on spot checks.
- Reduced missed violations and minimized false positives compared to the previous phrase-matching approach.
- Freed compliance teams from manual transcript review, enabling targeted coaching and higher-value oversight.
- Delivered escalation records with clear violation reasoning and full contextual detail.
- Enabled advanced filtering, sorting and reporting for stronger compliance governance and transparency.
