In Focus Collections
some times over the last few months, with the volume of customer contact, that is not going to change anytime soon.
Where does automation come in? You may have noticed automation is in title, but it has not been mentioned yet, and that is for a very specific reason. All too many times, my business engagements are immediately drawn to discussing technology without a full appreciation of the actual business need. Technology is there to help you deliver on
the ‘job to be done’, with the focus ideally being on the business benefits. The critical thing at this stage of any planning is keep it simple Gall’s Law being very appropriate: “Gall’s Law states that all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked. If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.” This is essential when thinking about
automation of the customer journey, as I have not been involved in any successful customer engagement automation projects yet that did not have lots of iterations following learnings and knowledge from initial customer usage. So it is unlikely that you will get it perfect
first go.
Automation is proving itself in collections There are lots of buzzwords and acronyms, in the industry, such as AI, ML, RPA, and bots to name a few, but whatever you call them they are hard at work in the collections industry today. I have seen many clients over the past 12 to
18 months really get going with automation in their collections activities, which is great to see as the collections industry was lagging behind when adoption rates are compared with other industries. This automation growth has been
helped massively by the increased usage of conversational messaging over SMS, WhatsApp and other digital channels. Conversational messaging and automation are the perfect partners for each other and the results are impressive. Automation is not a binary decision as, where automation cannot or should not
June 2020
operate, that is where your existing agents get blended into the conversation. Companies should expect to have the
capability to automate about 40% of their collections conversations within a three to four month period, the easiest place to start is the ID&V and move on from there. I have clients giving me feedback on
achieving above 65% automation on customer engagements. Impressive figures, but do not be afraid
about the costs either as most automation is delivered via a usage model, an example of this being Google’s Dialogflow, super easy for non-technical people to use and train the ‘automated agent’ and only pay for what you use.
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The training aspect is something that you
should certainly factor highly into your considerations when looking at automation, ideally you should be able to train the automated bot to get better and better with usage, believe me it makes an incredible difference in the longer term for delivering ongoing success. Automation will be essential for you and
your business as others around you will be reaping the benefits. The liquidity challenge is going to be an
enormous opportunity, get your business into shape to deal with it now. Placing automated conversational
messaging as a key pillar of your contact strategy will be a very wise move. CCR
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