In Focus Consumer Credit
the customers are driving up engagement behaviours, or whether the industry is doing so, it is a chicken-and-egg situation. If we are not at least abreast with our customers’ needs, and preferably ahead of them, then we would lose our customers because they would not trust us to engage with them in a proper manner. Many of our metrics are not related to collections at all, although we are collecting, the main measures are all related to customer service. And, in some of our client meetings, the whole of the agenda is around customer service; how much we collect is a relative afterthought. This sets the right tone from the top of how we should deal with their customers – with engagement and treating customers fairly being given a clear priority over the amount collected.
JP:We are trying to do more for our clients while they are still with us, before we disconnect accounts and pass them out for debt collection. We are starting, for the first time, to provide more in-depth information about our debt processes online. If someone goes to Help and Support today, they get lots of information about their handset and call charges, for example, but they do not get enough information about what happens if they do not pay their bill, or if they are in debt. So now we are putting those things onto our website and explaining they will get texts, letters and e-mails, and signposting places to get help with debt. When they are more than one bill overdue, we help and advise them to at least pay their oldest bill, so they prevent disconnection. Near the end of our debt process, we used to bar people from making outgoing and receiving incoming calls; now we just stop them from making outbound calls. They can still call customer service (and our automated payment IVR) and we and our debt partners can still get
The consumers’ attitude towards what self-service means will change over time
in touch with them. This helps us to engage with customers earlier in the debt process, which is a better experience for both parties.
MO: You need to be careful about what you target because anything you target changes behaviours. We do still pay a bonus on cash collected, but it is only one element of what they get and they certainly must go through the compliance and quality gates first, as well as the customer-service feedback. We use SMS after each call to get a brief survey from the clients and that drives a score for each of the agents. I am always surprised by how many people respond to it, because it is huge volumes, and the fact that Collections has now got the highest satisfaction score of any of the service departments in the business.
What is the role of self-serve? BK: One of the aims of our portal was to enhance contact. People do not necessarily want to talk to us, so they can go online and load up an I&E without having, what they perceive to be, a big debate about their expenditure. For them, it is a way to avoid human contact and, for us, it is a way to get feedback. One of the challenges is whether we have the expertise in-house to analyse and develop a truly excellent self-service portal.
GP:We must consider this as an industry rather than an individual organisation. The consumers’ attitude towards what self-service
means will change over time. The investment organisations make would be served well if it was changed from a capital concept to an ongoing revenue concept, as developing this channel is something that we will do long- term, rather than specific projects. It changes the attitude so that it makes improving your interface business as usual, just like your other customer-interfaces are. You then get used to the fact you are making iterative changes and just need to work out what the priorities are for the next updates, rather than there being a target to hit for the project.
SD: As a principle, there is a group of clients who want to perform a specific activity and do not need assistance – we need to get out of their way, remove the friction and make it easy – this is where self-serve comes in. In this way you save your ‘human skills’ for the customers who need more nuanced support, better served by a conversation.
GPS: It is important to design products with the customer relationship in mind. We have pricing levels Gold, Silver and Bronze so, as customers repay on time, they go up in levels and the pricing goes down for the next loan. It is a way to reward our clients and give them a sense of status. We found that customers tend to give us preferential treatment in making repayments to not lose their pricing level. We used to have a bonus reward scheme where, if customers made six payments on time, we would give them one back. We found that if a customer missed a payment, they would call us back and ask if they could still keep their bonus – it generated a lot of inbound traffic. We are currently replacing this scheme with a social-currency programme which gives the customer points for positive behaviour like paying on time and referring friends. CCR
Left-right: Mark Higgins; Mike O’Reilly; Peter Telford; Marie Moffatt; Steve Dukes January 2017
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