Digital debt collection strategies for call centers

As you already know, debt collection campaigns can be challenging. Achieving high recovery rates takes time and effort – but with the right contact center tools in place, your campaigns will be a lot more effective. 

In this blog post, you’ll find a few digital debt collection strategies leveraging contact center software. Check them out and be sure to implement them in your next campaign.

AI, automation and agents 

Using self-service and digital solutions in debt collection is an increasing customer demand. According to surveys, 61% of consumers prefer a mix of self-service and human interactions. Offering both options can help you achieve greater efficiency in your debt collection campaigns.

Using AI in the contact center can further improve your collections projects. Some of the most popular AI-powered features include voicebots, TTS and STT, sentiment analysis, language detection and voice biometrics, but the full list of promises seem endless. Check out our most recent webinar to discover the reality and opportunities of AI-enhanced solutions in your customer interactions. 

Omnichannel

Being available on various platforms increases the chances of debtors successfully reaching out to you and taking care of their payments. To make the most of multiple channels, they need to be synchronized. Offering this type of omnichannel communication makes your agents’ work easier and quicker as well since they can review customer communication across all channels in one, unified platform. 

This provides quicker resolutions and better agent-client communication, helping the debt collection process move forward.

Customer segmentation

One of the issues that many debt collection campaigns struggle with is figuring out what strategy to use for their various debtor profiles. Chasing after and managing default cases requires an entirely different strategy than managing one-off, small debtors.

With the right digital debt collection software, such as the solution offered by VCC Live, you can determine intelligent routing criteria for each campaign, with elements such as the amount overdue, number of payments missed, and CRM information. You can then segment your accounts based on groups of debtors similar to each other.

For example, for a small debtor, you can launch an outbound IVR call, giving them self-service payment options, and send them an SMS or chat notification once the payment is finished.

For medium-size debtors, you can offer IVR options with self-service payment opportunities, as well as the chance to connect to a live agent if needed. If the debtor negotiates the payment details with the agent, the agent can then send their agreement terms over email.

With long-term and high debtors, you can instantly assign your best agent to negotiate the case, concentrating human effort where it’s needed the most.

CRM Integration for live interactions

By having a CRM integration, you can make sure that your agents have the latest, up-to-date data on a client. CRM integration is essential, not just for an enhanced customer experience, but also for making sure that agents can work with the most up-to-date data, thereby avoiding invalid debt collection attempts (collecting on debt that has already been settled, for example).

Finally, when handling live calls, a voicemail detection feature can significantly help reduce waiting time. By automatically detecting voicemail, you can make sure that your agents are not spending idle time listening to answering machines. With the use of this feature VCC Live’s client, 4finance, one of Europe’s largest digital consumer lending groups, was able to reduce idle time arising from voicemail connections by 30%. Learn how they did it here.

Real-time payments to Increase Your PTP Rate

Another effective technique is applying a system that allows real-time over-the-phone payments. This essentially means that agents can collect credit card payments entered with the phone’s keypad during actual conversations with customers. This is a 100% secure, PCI DSS-certified process with no visibility for credit card details.

Check out how this works:

More resources for better collections

VCC Live is an easily customizable and scalable contact center solution. 

Check out how it can supercharge your collections projects – interactive demo available.

Contact us to find out more.