In Focus Collections
Taking a forward-looking view of collections contact
CCRMagazine talks to Derwyn Jones, chief executive officer of Ultracomms about the key drivers for success in the call-centre sector
What is your industry background and why do you work in the contact technology industry? Ultracomms is a UK born and bred customer contact technology company. I manage the business and try to keep our employees and investors happy. We are still a very profitable company that has seen good growth over the past few years. I think I was attracted to this industry
because I am a problem solver at heart and find human interaction fascinating when it comes to working on business solutions. I have also spent many years in the
contact-centre industry as a customer, so I understand the effectiveness of technology and how it can transform operations.
How has Ultracomms helped collections industry clients? The Ultracomms team was one of the first to deliver contact centre management from the cloud. That was back in 2004, and, since then, we have gathered a lot of experience in the collections sector and have a number of established clients using our omni-channel contact-centre management system. Our approach is to work hand in hand
with our customers to understand their operations and priorities. With in-house development we can
address just about any requirement, but, notably, we jointly invented secure payments technology allowing secure telephone payments to PCI standards. We also hold a European patent for answer- machine detection, which we provide as standard in our contact platform. We are also keenly focused on delivering
superb customer experience. We appreciate the human factor is still critical in collections and we combine this with speech analytics through our partnership with Call Miner to
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provide unique insights that help optimise the customer experience. Our capabilities in the collections sector
are borne out by a number of longstanding relationships with companies including Creditstyle, Creditfix, and Uncle Buck. Customers tell us that flexibility and ease of
use are vital to the day-to-day management of their customer service centres. They need to be able to self-manage
according to their moveable business needs without needing to raise requests that then sit with a supplier for action – they need to self-serve and drive their own outcomes without the additional overhead of multiple dialler managers. Some solutions seem to be tailored to
either a consumer debt collection or commercial environment – for organisations working in both spaces, on large and small accounts, it is great to have the flexibility to suit either with easy configuration. Of course, every customer expects great
service to help them optimise service which we are dedicated to, offering some of the most experienced people in the industry in our client services, technical and development teams.
What are the key business drivers for contact services in the collections industry? Flexibility is important, the business focus can change and the set up needs to be easily configurable. What I feel makes for a differentiator, in the quality of customer service though, is great visibility of customer data across all channels, and seamless integration of the CRM system to ensure good decision making and fast call resolution. Of course, in the collections space it is vital to ensure affordability and have fast
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With in-house development we can address just about any requirement, but, notably, we jointly invented secure payments technology allowing secure telephone payments to PCI standards. We also hold a European patent for answer-machine detection, which we provide as standard in our contact platform
access to customer and industry data to ensure the fair handling of each case. Ultracomms recently commissioned
independent research that showed in the financial-services sector 41% said that they wanted to be able to speak to a person more easily and experience less passing of calls from department to department. Also, 38% said they wanted to know where their contact details came from and why they were being contacted. Customers want faster service and also
for calls to be escalated to the right person when needed. They also like to use a range of different channels to contact organisations and it is critical to have good oversight of all interactions. Another key area for collections businesses,
of course, is compliance. Our research showed that 65% of financial-services customers said that they had been contacted without their consent. Whether a customer has this right or not, the perception does brand reputation no favours. Achieving crucial operational compliance around data collection, privacy, and
June 2019
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