Credit Collections and Risk Article

The following article is featured in the latest edition of Credit Collections and Risk (CCR) magazine. This is a must read for professionals working in the debt collections industry. It is especially relevant for those involved with the collection of debt for utility bills.

Increasing Utilities Collections with a Multi-Channel Contact Strategy

Any collection is difficult, but utilities collection is the toughest and can be unyielding without smart utilisation of additional communication technologies.

FROM discussions with customers, we have found that the biggest issue facing the collection of debt for utility bills is talking to the people that are, for whatever reason, difficult to contact.

Taking payment from people who either can’t, won’t or are genuinely unable to pay has proved challenging for many collectors. This can be a sensitive area with gas, electricity and water being essential, life sustaining commodities rather than luxuries that can be cut back or done without altogether.

Furthermore, when a utility company is forced to withdraw a facility, it can face bad press, difficult processes and high costs which can make it ‘less worthwhile’ than taking back a car or domestic appliance. The debtor often knows this and may feel less uncomfortable when not paying.

How Can Technology Help?

We live in a 24 hour society with communication options available any time of day or night. So is the modern consumer being unrealistic by expecting to pay bills and debts 24x7x365?

Collections operations cannot afford to staff call centres overnight so what is the alternative? There are 8,760 hours in a year and even the most ambitious collections centre is usually only open about 40% of this time. Fortunately, contact and payment technologies have advanced to a degree that now allows collections to take place at any time.

And collections operations that offer a multi-channel contact approach including payment automation, predictive dialling, text-to-speech, automated IVR, and SMS are far more likely to collect from such hard-to-reach debtors.

Maximising the Investment in Existing Contact Centre

Advanced interactive voice response (IVR) means that payments can be processed at any time without any human interaction. Debtors can also avoid the potential embarrassment of speaking to a collections agent about their outstanding debt – often a deterrent for debtors calling to make utility payments. Our experience has shown that by removing this obstacle, collection payments will increase as a result.

Data security is paramount and advanced contact systems now provide total payment security ensuring collections agents never have access to customer credit or debit card details, assisting with PCI compliance.

SMS Alternative

There will always be a percentage of clients that can be contacted by traditional methods such as post or telephone. Both avenues have been used extensively by debt collectors, either by direct mail or predictive dialling, often as a combined campaign. The addition of SMS messaging to the collector’s armoury provides another method of reaching difficult to contact debtors. Over 95% of texts are opened and messages can be highly targeted.

SMS can easily be configured in a way that only debtors who haven’t responded to a designated number of calls will be contacted by this method. They can be used for payment reminders or acknowledgment of payments. Inbound calls can often be prompted as a direct result of an SMS increasing dialogue with the debtor.

CRM and Back Office Integration

Data duplication is costly and time consuming for any collections operation using predictive diallers. Therefore, it is imperative to choose a system that will fully integrate with existing CRMs or back office systems.

Consider this, if a debtor was to send in payment by post, or call a team not based on the dialler, would you want them to be called later in the day, or even the next day, reminding them for payment? Of course not, and fully integrated predictive dialler systems ensure that any update made anywhere within the business automatically updates the dialler in real-time.

Seamless integration ensures time and money is not wasted and again, can improve levels of customer service and satisfaction.

Conclusion

We have all accepted for a long time that verbal communication is the strongest form of persuasion and the role of outbound dialling has never been in question. Extending its functionality to include text-to-speech, SMS and secure payment automation can only improve collection rates.

By removing excuses not to pay, reminding by SMS or voice messaging and providing a ‘thank you’ for payment may not only achieve the next payment, but improve the debtor’s perception of your operation.