In Focus Collections The future is now!
Last month, CCRMagazine and The Zinc Group gathered together a group of senior industry professionals to consider the growing significance of technology in customer engagement. They were: Richard Fenton, head of corporate development, The Zinc Group (RF); Sonny Visawadia, group collections senior analytics manager, HSBC; Sarah Watts, associate director, structured finance, Shawbrook Bank (SW); Gary Moffat, collections strategy manager, Centrica (GM); Sara Hopkins, IT director, Simplyhealth (SH); Clive Jacobs, credit manager, Ørsted; Stuart Sykes, group customer operations director, MyJar (SS); Colin Baldwin, credit risk manager, Smartestenergy; Rachel Vann, group digital & transformation, Lloyds Banking Group; Jason Spence, supplier information manager, Opus Energy; Luke Harrison, agency manager, Opus Energy; Craig Proctor, group commercial director, The Zinc Group (CP); Marie Moffatt, head of collections and recoveries, Zopa; Tom Evans, relationship manager, Zopa; David Pickering, chief executive, Lending Standards Board (DP); and Laurence Venn, formerly head of collections and recoveries, Yorkshire Building Society (LV)
What are the most effective methods of customer engagement today? RF: In total, 32% of our communications is digital, which means that 68% lies elsewhere, and nobody will be very surprised that this 68% is very traditional. So, if we let the statistics speak for themselves, then the most effective means of communication is allowing people to call us, but the percentage of digital channels is growing at a tremendous rate. I do not think that it will overtake the traditional method of calling into the contact centre, and digital channels often facilitate that call coming in, once people can get a feel for the business as it is, and be reassured that we are not trying to set a deep, dark trap for the customer. That is what digital is, for us: allowing the customer to ‘come in and walk around’ the business, and understand that the ‘bad old days’ in the industry are just that: ‘the old days’.
SS: At a conference last week, we had a speaker on artificial intelligence (AI) to look at what your digital strategy should be, to get the right kind of contact to the right
customer. Someone texted me this morning to say: “Just think, people who were born in the year 2000, are going to be 18 this year!” Anecdotally, he rang his daughter to see if she wanted any money for a trip they were taking, and she did not answer, she sent him back a text asking why he was being rude by telephoning her. The Millennials between the ages of 18 and 25 on average make two calls from their mobile phone each week, but they touch their telephone roughly 2,000 times a day. So you need to put questions about where you go with your communications strategy into this context.
Why can we not be more creative with technology and tailor this to the demographic or behaviour of the individual? Including if they are a Millennial, their working patterns, if they have young children
SW: Understanding what works for your customers is paramount in collections. An example of this was a few years ago it was found people preferred not to take telephone calls in the evening, a behaviour which collectors maximised through utilising multi-channels. From what started as a good response rate, by simply calling in the morning, they found, by sending a text in the evening to say that they would be calling the next morning it had an even better response rate. Following on from this, and in a world where we hold more customer data, why can we not be more creative with technology and tailor this to the demographic or behaviour of the individual? Including if they are a Millennial, their working patterns, if they have young children, how they have responded through different channels in the past and so on.
CP: It is one of the biggest points of conversation we have with new customers: we explain the digital proposition, we explain what we do and how we do it, and a number of people will say
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Left-right: Clive Jacobs; Colin Baldwin; David Pickering; Gary Moffatt; Sara Hopkins March 2018
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