Background screening providers often promise speed, efficiency and low costs. At AB Global, we believe background screening standards should be higher: deliver those advantages without sacrificing quality, transparency, service or trust.
I’ve spent more than 30 years in the background screening industry. Early in my career, the industry was far less mature than it is today. Paper folders organized operations, banks of fax machines collected client orders and busy mailrooms sent search requests across the country.
Fast-forward to today, when technology rules the day. Information moves at remarkable speed; work flows through automated processing queues and physical mailings are increasingly rare. As technology continues to reshape background screening, especially in the age of artificial intelligence, the industry must decide whether faster processing will also produce better, more trustworthy service.
Faster and Cheaper Cannot Come at the Cost of Trust
Background screening companies continue to find ways to process information more quickly and at lower costs. Nearly every successful company has a never-ending pursuit of these objectives, as it should be. Where this effort often goes bad is when companies pursuing faster and cheaper compromise other value sets. Values such as quality and trust.
Nearly 15 years ago, I can remember making a case in a company board room that we should revert back to a legacy process after a change made that clearly hindered the quality of one of our services, only to be told that customers would never know and therefore “why does it matter if the customer does not know?” At that moment, in that boardroom, it only mattered that the company would save money. It did not matter that we would proceed with doing something that misled customers. It’s a moment when money ruled over doing the right thing. I’ll never forget that experience.
At AB Global, we value, above all things, that we will provide the best services, the best support that we can. Every day in every way. Over three decades of experience has allowed me to see the best in our industry. It also allowed me to see the worst. Lessons learned at every stop on my career journey.
Raising Background Screening Standards
I proudly state whenever I get the chance that at AB Global, we chase greatness. That’s our place in the industry…the Gold Standard in Background Screening®. While we work with advanced technology to make our processing as efficient as possible, we don’t compromise our integrity or the trust that our clients have (yes, we have clients, not customers at AB Global). We do not have conversations in our boardroom about any change that results in our not being the best that we can be.
While other companies may do things that their “customers” are not aware of, whether it’s using offshore processing centers without disclosure or substituting information databases for real-time information sources, we value the trust that our clients place in us above anything else. When no one is watching, we’re going to do the right thing every time.
Six Ways We Put the Promise Into Practice
Years ago, AB Global accepted the challenge of becoming the best background screening company it could be. That is an ambitious goal, but one we revisit at every Leadership Team meeting. Raising the bar requires more than saying the right things; it requires building services and commitments that clients can see, use and measure. Here are six ways we are putting that promise into practice.
- Client Concierge Program: Every client receives a dedicated support person, no call centers and no phone trees.
- Screening University: The background screening industry’s ONLY background screening program management curriculum.
- The AB Global Challenge: Try our services for a free two-week trial period. No risk. We will earn your trust.
- The Two Hour Response Guarantee: We guarantee (it’s in our Service Agreement) that we will respond to any inquiry within 2 business hours.
- Professor Hootsworth’s Knowledge Vault: A resource library with reference materials to assist you with your program management.
- US Processing for US Job Candidates: We proudly process US background checks in the US while others are sending candidate social security numbers to other countries without voluntary disclosure.
At AB Global, we never stop working on continuous improvements. More announcements will be made soon. We’re excited for the future, and we are proud that we have RAISED THE BAR!
