TELROCK SMART INTERACTIONS The technology options
Last month CCRMagazine and Telrock led a debate group to discuss the growing role of technology in collections, and society. They were: Garry Fearn, head of debt recovery, Shop Direct Financial Services; Sarah Watts, structured finance, Shawbrook Bank (SW); Jannie Vermeulen, credit risk officer, Fleet Mortgages; Laura Harrison, head of business development – Europe, Telrock; Bob Kingdon, compliance director, Intrum (BK); Martin Parr, senior consumer credit professional; Bruce Turnbull, sales consultancy, Telrock; Denise Crossley, managing director, Lantern (DC); Frank Horvath, managing director, Link Financial Outsourcing (FH); Matt Hensby, head of product, Telrock; Stuart Knock, chief executive, EOS Solutions UK (SK); Lindsay Smith, chief technology officer, Telrock; John Preston, head of billing, collections and revenue assurance, Tesco Mobile; Clive Jacobs, credit manager, Ørsted (CJ); Mark Fiander, director, Lending Stream (MF); Mark Bryant, compliance director, SLL Capital; and Tariq Ali, credit and collections professional (TA)
on doors, repossessing cars, so you saw the customer face-to-face. You would see the customer quite often face-to-face to sell them the agreement on behalf of the dealer. You can do letters or anything, but the one thing that people tend not to ignore is a telephone call, or an actual visit. Obviously, these days it is not cost-effective to go around seeing customers all the time, unless the debt is huge, but a simple telephone call can build you a picture of why that person is in debt.
SW: Equally, I understand how customers in a vulnerable situation may not wish to engage over the telephone. I agree collections calls are an extremely powerful tool in collections, but some people may prefer to engage over a slower form of communication to be able to take more time to digest information and provide a more considered approach, such as Messenger.
MP: Face-to-face is great as you actually see the whites of their eyes, how are they reacting. Quite often, you can quickly determine if they are vulnerable, or aggressive, or even if the situation is their fault – is there
something you can do to help them through, and do you want to choose to do that?
FH: There is certainly a regulatory aspect to this as well, in terms of being able to understand what the reasons are for the delinquency or the debt. You are obliged to assume, under the TCF principles, that a customer who cannot repay you, may potentially be vulnerable. So you have to eliminate that possibility before you can progress to further actions, and, if you do not, then you will be guilty of treating everyone in the same way regardless of their circumstances. You have to give the option for the customer to contact you, so it is not all push. It might be a case of inviting a response and seeing if you get one through that medium, and, if you do not, trying something else. Go through the communications options and pick up on what the customer’s preferred channel is from the front-end marketing – if you get that data – and then follow up in the most appropriate way. But you cannot just push it all through auto-service because, ultimately, the customer may just be responding in a way to get you
to back off and potentially overcommitting, which will mean that you end up with potential customer detriment and re-work a month down the line.
TA: Everything is getting so personal now. People will not necessarily want to get behind in their payments, it will tend to be a case of them being afraid or prideful, something personal that has happened to them, that they maybe lost their job or there has been a death in the family. It can be such a hard situation: I have been sat in kitchens with customers in tears, trying to explain that they need to tell us about their situation, otherwise we cannot fully understand it. Maybe we just see that the payments have been missed despite our frequent reminders, and we want to understand fully, rather than just send the bailiff round. But people have that personal responsibility to tell us that they are behind because of a number of given reasons.
SW: It is a question of getting that hook right. It does not matter what communication channel customers
In Focus Risk
>>
Left-right: Denise Crossley; Garry Fearn; Jannie Vermeulen; Laura Harrison; Lindsay Smith April 2018
www.CCRMagazine.com 39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
