A Multi Channel Approach

While predictive diallers have stood the text of time, there are now additional methods to improve customer contact.

Initially, many collections operations invested in predictive dialling technology to improve contact and liquidation rates. The organisations that made the investment reaped benefits in terms of cost reduction and increased voice contact efficiency (up to 300%). This has been recognised at credit industry awards, where many of the winners have embraced predictive dialling technology at the forefront of their collections campaigns.

However, they did not stop there... Nowadays we are seeing an integrated, multi-channel approach involving SMS, email, text-to-speech and payment automation.

There are still some operations that are dialling manually and not benefiting from the advances in technology. Are these companies about to wither and die?

Technology Continuum

Collections organisations have seen a radical overhaul of their technologies in recent times involving five main stages in a technology continuum.







1) Ten years ago, most were contacting debtors by dialling manually from paper records with huge staff and premise overheads.

2) As CRM solutions became more established, organisations started to dial their clients directly from data provided by these systems.

3) Basic automated predictive dialling started to become popular, tripling agent productivity and debtor contact rates.

4) Over time, some of these systems became more sophisticated and included detailed reporting, call recording and CRM integration.

5) Nowadays, the most advanced systems include a fully integrated and multi- channel platform including SMS, email, text-to-speech, voice broadcasting and automated payment facilities.

If viewing the collections industry as a whole, there is a huge variance in which organisations sit in this continuum – it is evident that the most successful and progressive agencies are currently employing the more advanced technologies. At which stage does your organisation sit?

Treating Customers Fairly

The collections industry has been subject to increasing levels of regulation and customer service has become key to achieving higher collection rates. The FSA sponsored Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) principles have become the benchmark for best practice. In addition to this, clients have become far more media savvy and demanding.

Prior to the technological advances, debtors could only make payments in standard office hours which proved impossible for some. In today’s ‘always on’ environment, this is no longer acceptable and is certainly not treating customers fairly. Fully integrated call centre systems now allow a business to operate for the full 168 hours in a week compared to the 40 hours a week customers were used to. In this respect, customer service levels have improved four fold.

Secure Payment Processing

Data security is a very hot topic - now more than ever. A call centre worker was recently jailed for stealing £250,000 from customers - using the credit card details stored on internal systems. The most advanced predictive dialling systems now have complete payment security in which agents never have access to customer credit card data and helps organisations become PCI compliant.

The best-of-breed predictive dialling systems now allow collections agencies to respond and have secure payment processing capability available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Integrated text-to-speech allows collections operations to communicate payment reminders through automated voice broadcasting and allow debtors to pay with their credit or debit card.

SMS Integration

Some debtors can be notoriously difficult to contact. A high quality predictive dialling system will allow collections agencies to contact debtors on various numbers at different times of the day. However, even this capability is sometimes not enough.

According to an article by Mark Cohen for the New York Times, 97% of SMS are opened and 83% of SMS are opened within the hour. Therefore, it is quite clear that this is a highly effective and targeted tool for contacting debtors. The most advanced predictive dialling systems allow for this additional layer of contact to be fully integrated with the dialler. Bulk or highly targeted messaging based on user generated rules and criteria such as ‘tried calling five times’ can be created. SMS Engines also allow debtors to text back with keywords such as ‘CALL’. This is fed back into the call centre system and calls that debtor immediately – improving levels of client satisfaction and increasing the likelihood of successful collection of monies.

Agent and CRM Interaction

Clients will always feel reassured when speaking to a human voice so agents will continue to be one of the most valuable resources within the business. They can often be the difference between the best and the average agencies. However, the better predictive dialling systems raise the performance of the weaker agents closer to that of the best.

Voice broadcasting and out-of-hours payment options will increase collection rates but there is still a need for human interaction. Better systems allow for automated outbound calls to be directly transferred to a live agent and IVR and skills based routing ensures the agents with the appropriate skill set take the relevant calls.

It is now imperative for any predictive dialler to fully integrate with a CRM, back office or collection system. A system will provide the dialler with data but it also needs to feedback the result, updating the original record after a contact or transaction has been made. A seamless integration of the system and dialler ensures that time and money is not wasted through data re-entry and duplication.

The diagram below illustrates the effectiveness of a multi-channel approach with complete back office system integration within a call centre.

Cost Factors

In an era of belt tightening, credit limitations and increased uncertainty, it can be tempting for some collections operations to muddle along with the perception that ‘doing nothing’ will see them through the difficult times. It has now been proven by various ROI calculations that the opposite is the case.

Adding a TouchStar predictive dialler on its own has a fast return on investment, this has been recognised for a long time. Adding a predictive dialler that is integrated to a multi-channel approach extending collection hours to a full 168 hours per month has to be a great investment. As the more progressive agencies improve their efficiencies and become leaner organisations that are fit for purpose, can your organisation afford to be left behind?