With customers’ financial circumstances becoming ever more complex, there is a school of thought that you can only really understand a customer’s true financial situation by talking to them 121 to get the full picture and that this cannot be replicated by remote, digital collections systems. At a recent conference I attended, one speaker dismissed digital collections as just sending customers “Pay Now” messages with little regard or understanding of their circumstances.
Firstly, whilst not all customers want to engage digitally, it is equally true that not all customers want to discuss their finances with a collections agent. Stressed or nervous customers might find it easier to “talk to” a screen rather than an agent and some customers are embarrassed by how they became indebted and do not want to discuss it. At DebtStream, it is our belief that a customer should be able to choose their engagement channel, they should also receive the same levels of support and service from any channel they chose to engage with, regardless of this being an agent conversation or digital interaction.
DebtStream clients include lenders, DCAs and debt servicers and aggregating their results, over 50% of their collections customers have now chosen to interact with our platform instead of through the traditional call centre, this includes customers where they have had no previous engagement at all.
The reality is that the DebtStream digital platform allows Customers to engage in a range of activities including making a payment, carrying out an Income and Expenditure analysis, setting up a payment plan or a deferred payment or arranging a call with a collections agent. Lenders, Utilities and DCAs can also display personalised messages to their customers through the platform.
“It is our belief that a customer should be able to choose their engagement channel, they should also receive the same levels of support and service from any channel they chose to engage with, regardless of this being an agent conversation or digital interaction
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You may wonder how these messages can be personalised when no previous conversation or interaction has taken place? The answer lies with the rich and varied data sources that can be ingested by the DebtStream platform and used to form a detailed picture of the customer’s financial status. This can include data that the DebtStream client already holds on their customer, further data provided by the end customer such as an income and expenditure analysis and third-party data provided, for example, by credit reference agencies. Using the DebtStream platform’s configurable rules engine, this data will then drive appropriate messages, primary call to actions and specific rules and parameters for the end customer.
Let me give you an example. A lender has three customers who all have £5k loans and six months missed payments. The first customer has more than the overdue balance readily available, but is choosing not to use it to repay the loan. They could be sent a message offering them a discount for full settlement of the arrears balance. The second customer has some available funds, but not sufficient to bring their payments completely up to date. They could be offered an affordable payment plan.
As an aside, our customers have told us that payment plans set up on the DebtStream platform have lower breakage rates than payment plans set up through their call centres. The third customer, on the other hand, has no available funds. They are not asked to make any form of immediate or deferred payment, rather it is suggested that they contact a range of debt charities through the embedded links within the platform.
I hope this provides an overview of some of the benefits to customers of deploying digital collections as part of your overall collections strategy.
In our recent webinar with the CSA two of our Co-Founders Gareth Bailey and Martin O’Donnell talked about the background of DebtStream, why we exist and the current landscape in Collections.
On Episode 11 of our Unwrapped series Martin O’Donnell caught up with AJ Davison from Acquired.com.
Focussing on the power of payments in improving the customer experience within collections, and touching on AI including Apple Intelligence.
On Episode 10 of our Unwrapped series Martin O’Donnell caught up with AJ Davison and George Boot from Acquired.com for a joint Podcast.
Over the last year, DebtStream and Acquired.com have formed a strong innovative partnership that continues to grow!
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Collections, Made Digital
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