In Focus Collections
Payments, payments: and not a telephone call in sight!
A new technological environment for payments is emerging, regardless of whether collectors are ready or not
Mark Oppermann EVP sales and marketing, Webio mark.oppermann @
webio.com
Getting payments from customers should be becoming easier with the abundance of technology and customer-engagement tools at our fingertips, but this is far from the norm, as I am sure you know only too well. One piece of essential equipment and
activity in the collections world is the telephone and the telephone call. Something that has not materially changed since the first telephone call ever on 10 March 1876 from Mr Bell to his assistant.
Communication shift The telephone has been the work horse for just about every collections operation over the past 30 years, but this over reliance is set to change dramatically. In simple terms, the average consumer is conducting fewer and fewer of their daily interactions and conversations on a telephone call. The shift to mobile messaging apps has
happened with people spending increasing amounts of time on devices and in messaging channels, and less time talking. This is not new information, but it is vital to reiterate just how the communications landscape is changing and how these changes will permeate into every business eventually.
In simple terms, the average consumer is conducting less and less of their daily interactions and conversations on a telephone call
The rise of messaging apps like Facebook
Messenger and WhatsApp – which are two of the biggest messaging platforms, with over 2.7 billion users worldwide – is remarkable. Between them alone, they process over 60 billion messages daily, the majority of this is person-to-person. Just think about that: 60 billion messages.
These adoption and usage rates are truly unprecedented and, if other messaging players are added into the mix, such as WeChat, Viber, Telegram, and Line, those numbers just get higher and higher. With this new-wave communication shift, business has definitely not been excluded.
From a standing start 17 months ago to today, there are over 2 billion business-to- consumer messages sent over Messenger each month. This figure, as you can imagine, is rising dramatically as ever more businesses transition into the messaging space. From simple ‘sending messages’ to more
complex interactions, messaging apps are transforming themselves to do even more for us in a ‘super easy’ way. There is one saying that that rings true
about any new technology or products, and that is that ‘ease of use drives adoption’. A simple example of this is how cash can be sent to friends via Messenger. This is just the start, as messaging apps will evolve at a rapid pace in two to three years.
The disruptors The Open Banking initiative is one event that will drive seismic change in the way goods and services are paid for, and ultimately the way we use banks. The huge battleground now is for payment transactions between the established players, high-street banks and these disrupters like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Let me pose a question to give the last
statement some context and you food for thought: when was the last time you were in a bank, compared to the last time you were on a messaging app? The answer is scary for banks as there is little they do today that cannot be delivered via a messaging app. So, you will need to start thinking about
a time when the telephone call is no longer the central plank to all aspects of customer engagement and collections activities. If you do not have a full range of self-service
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www.CCRMagazine.co.uk December 2017
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