With the rise of targeted, personalised digital advertising in the retail sector it is a wonder that the collections industry has been so slow off the mark.
The seismic shift of consumer behaviour has seen the major banks and retail outfits shrinking their traditional high street presence to online interactive engagements with the likes of Halifax banking group seeing high street banks close down at an alarming rate with The Mirror reporting that by early 2023, a total of 133 Lloyds High Street Bank branches, 50 Halifax branches and 19 Bank of Scotland branches will have closed.
This may be a dismal set of circumstances for the unfortunate staff members working in those branches however this is not the same for the Halifax Banking Group, who according to the Halifax Courier saw the banking giant post pre-tax profits of £2bn in the three months to September 30, up from £1bn in that same quarter in 2020. This was higher than analysts’ forecasts of £1.3bn with Chief Financial Officer William Chalmers at the time saying “The pandemic has driven a significant shift in how many of our customers choose to bank and transact, and we continue to examine how we can support them through further development of our digital technologies. However, our commitment to efficiency remains unchanged, and I believe there are significant opportunities to invest in improving our processes through enhanced technology.” More recently according to the Source: Sharecast, pre-tax profit for the six months to the end of June rose to £3.1bn from £2.5bn a year earlier as income rose 2% to £9.5bn – not bad considering the number of physical bank branches closing doors.
The bottom line, consumers are demanding online engagement, in fact according to BBC sources it has predicted that 35 million people, or 72% of the UK adult population will bank via a phone app by 2023, so why would it be any different when it comes to the traditionally ‘taboo’ business of debt collection?
Why is there still an expectation for consumers to engage over the phone with a call center agent when in all other interactions they are banking online, shopping online and even socialising online.
Fortunately, we are starting to see a shift in the collections space from the traditional ‘call center’ based collections journey, fraught with risk through human error, which is prescriptive in its very nature, over to a more customer centric personalised end-to-end digital collections journey. Businesses that carry or offer credit are starting to realise the benefits of providing their customers with choice…choice to engage at time that suites them with 24/7/365 online access, choice around the terms they want to agree to, choice around the way they complete their income and expenditure assessment, choice on which type of payment method they would prefer.
“The bottom line consumers are demanding online engagement, in fact according to BBC sources it has predicted that 35 million people, or 72% of the UK adult population will bank via a phone app by 2023
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It’s about time that the financial sector put their customers first and make use of the digital tools now available in the market to engage with their collections customers online in a compliant and non-threatening manner under their own brand, focusing on customer retention and not only customer collections.
If you are looking for a digital platform that can integrate into your existing collections or CRM systems, then give DebtStream a look. With out of the box end-to-end digital collections wrapped into a neat SaaS solution, you can quickly join the market leaders with a very powerful digital collections solution.
DebtStream and TCN are delighted to announce their new partnership, set to transform the contact centre experiences for collections operations. The partnership aims to elevates both agent and customer experiences through enabling businesses across call centre technology, through to customer self-service.
DebtStream and Acquired.com are delighted to announce their new partnership, set to transform the payments experience for customers in debt.
Our host, Martin O’Donnell, is joined by Steve Coppard, an expert with extensive experience in collections and recoveries across various sectors including over 20 years in the public sector.
So, grab yourself a brew, slap on those headphones, and let’s delve into some insightful discussions whilst you rock on with your day!
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Collections, Made Digital
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