Does Your Predictive Dialler Strategy Work?

Our latest article in the April issue of Credit Collections & Risk Magazine.

Predictive diallers have been utilised by debt collection operations for a long time but are you making the most of them?

MORE than being just a tool to increase contact with debtors, predictive diallers have become a barometer to measure the success or failure of the entire operation. It is perhaps time to take stock and evaluate whether your system is truly optimised to its fullest potential.

Experienced collections managers already know it is not just about installing the technology and instantly getting results but more about implementing successful business strategies built around the predictive dialler that wins the day. Are you doing enough?

Why Have Predictive Diallers Been Such A Resounding Success?

There are many reasons why forward thinking debt collection operations made investments in predictive diallers – contacting more debtors being the most obvious. In addition, the following have been especially important:

1) Using a manual dialling process it is near impossible to call all debtors across multiple numbers through a pre-determined strategy of calling times and recall rules. Predictive diallers have become a essential tool to ensure all debtors are consistently called on a regular basis and data penetration is maximised.

2) Management information such as ‘number of attempted contacts’, ‘call outcomes’, ‘date agreed to pay’, etc are commonplace reports and integrated real-time call monitoring and call recording ensure legal requirements are met. If you are collecting debt on behalf of clients, you can bet their demands have increased of late and this information is proving essential.

So, if these are some of the key priorities for your collections centre, are your key dialler strategies optimised to ensure you obtain maximum ROI from your predictive dialler investment?

Dialler Speed

Incorrectly, many collections businesses put too much emphasis on dialler speed – the common misconception is that dialling more numbers at a quicker pace will automatically result in increased contacts.

However, the only increase that is often gained is the number of dropped calls which can not only impact their ability to collect from debtors, but can also result in the dialler slowing down the pace it dials to ensure you comply with Ofcom regulations.

The mathematics is fairly straightforward too. Collections data will be ‘burned’ four times faster if the dialler connect rate is reduced by half due to increasing the dialler speed – so the collections call centre is effectively making four times the effort to obtain the same number of payment arrangements.

Agent Burnout

A predictive dialler that is paced too fast can cause agent burnout and this can have unforeseen consequences. Collections agents don’t want to take a call every five seconds and, whether you are aware of this or not, agents are known to ‘dump’ calls.

This practice is wasting yours or your client’s data – ask yourself, would your client be happy to discover that someone who has been recorded on the dialler as ‘Not Available’, was in fact available but your agent was not interested.

Duplicates

Duplicate records can have a significant impact on the collections call centre. If you have three duplicate records of a debtor and have their home, mobile and work number that are called once a day, you would in fact be calling them a minimum of nine times a day.

This significantly increases the likelihood of being perceived as harassing the debtor – who may be more inclined not to pay. Not only is this bad practice it is an annoyance to the debtor, flaunting regulations and wasting a significant amount of time.

Quality Assurance

It is one thing for calls to be connected to agents in the most efficient manner possible but another to ensure that agents are actually making collections! You need to consider quality assurance systems that monitor performance and identify any training requirements.

A quality predictive dialler will come complete with real-time statistics, historical reporting, call recording and coaching and monitoring that will enable you to do this.

We couldn’t stress more that it is imperative to use these tools to ensure you don’t have a scenario in which the dialler is well optimised, yet you still achieve mediocre bottom-line results because the agent performance is not being monitored.

Conclusion

There are many ways in which collections centres can optimise their predictive dialler solutions. This article is merely an introduction to some of the issues to consider. There is much information and many tools available from the right predictive dialling equipment – it is up to the collections operation to get more from their equipment.

Consider starting with a thorough analysis of your business KPI’s . Then establish whether your predictive dialler solution can be tailored to help you achieve those KPI’s easily - satisfying the ever increasing demands from your clients.