In Focus Consumer Credit


In the eye of the storm


At a time of real crisis for customers, a credit control team can truly come to the fore and shine


Darren Allardyce Credit manager, AdlerandAllan darren.allardyce @adlerandallan.co.uk


The end of 2015 was interesting. We had recently been awarded our first CICMQ accreditation and were discussing what the next project may be. Then, in December, storms Desmond and Eva hit the North West with devastating consequences. As a founding member of the Business


Emergency Resilience Group (BERG) we have been assisting the response to the flooding since December 2015. DEFRA established a Property Level Resilience Grant to implement resilience and resistance measures to help reduce the risk of future flooding. The scheme provided grants to homeowners and businesses.


Early involvement This project involved the whole organisation with a management team being assembled to establish the early project plan. The credit control team were involved early, faced with an increase of thousands of extra consumer clients to our usual B2B customer base. We worked with grant applications under


four local authorities, liaising closely with them to help secure approvals whilst dealing with flood victims sensitively. Our chief executive Mark Calvert was


appointed, by DEFRA, to lead the BERG taskforce to improve the uptake of the resilience fund at a local level. We placed a mobile unit in Kendal to


support the response within South Lakeland to enable flood-affected residents to apply, and operations teams were mobilised to handle the initial claims. The credit control team was consulted


by our board to assist with the process, particularly around the flow of grant funds from DEFRA via the respective local authorities, and onto the residents and service providers.


22 The project team worked tirelessly to


help develop and review the initial grant applications, mandates, and subsequent signoffs for completed surveys and works matched, so the local authorities could release funds onto residents and contractors with the minimum of delay. Education around grant top-up funding


and insurance was also communicated to customers to assist their payments.


issues were handled both sympathetically and quickly. Throughout the project, the credit team proactively highlighted commercial challenges and provided opportunities for continued improvement. We advised more than 4,000 walk-ins,


knocked on numerous doors, engaged in community-outreach campaigns, social- media campaigns and more, with a great result. We have facilitated more than


The collection blend required sensitivity and included out-of-hours calls to residents, targeted letters, and a text-message campaign that became essential to our need to filter payments quickly


Responders In addition to managing the project, we were also one of the responders dealing directly with installation works. In this respect, the team was kept busy with regard to recovery of grant funds, especially where councils had paid grants directly to homeowners. The collection blend required sensitivity


and included out-of-hours calls to residents, targeted letters, and a text-message campaign that became essential to our need to filter payments quickly. The team liaised extensively with


operations (there were 17 install teams at the height of the project) to ensure customers were happy with completed works, and any


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2,000 applications for the grant across four councils, and installed flood resilience, and resistance solutions, in more than 1,000 residential and commercial properties. Our participation in this scheme has been


a steep learning curve, but it has placed our company on the map of the flood sector. This hard work was recognised by winning the recent Barclays Award for Building Resilient Business, at the Business in the Community Awards 2017. I would like to publicly applaud the dedication, drive and sense of commercial responsibility showed by the credit control and billing team in dealing with customers under such vulnerable circumstances. CCR


January 2018


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