CCR2 Utilities and Telecoms


Really having it all


Developing customer conversations through text and online messaging provides for a wider scope of benefit


Jattinder Singh Strategic account manager, Esendex jattinder.singh @esendex.com


Debt collection at its best is sensitive to the circumstances of the individual, inexpensive, efficient, and effective. But out of good, fast, and cheap, the received wisdom is that you can pick only two. Can you have it all? We have been


exploring this proposition with a number of utilities providers, as well as DCAs, and we think we have cracked it.


Sensitivity Sensitivity means not hectoring people with repeated telephone calls, giving them repayment options, making it easy for them to make a payment, and, while encouraging self-serve, always having the option to have a conversation. This sounds expensive, but that is where


intelligent messaging comes in. A customer with X amount of debt over Y days old for whom we hold e-mail and mobile contact information will drop into ‘workflow A’, with the tone, content, and frequency of messages, and the channel via which they are delivered, adapting to the debtor’s behaviour. The messages, regardless of channel,


always encourage self-serve, and the mobile-collections solution allows customers to identify themselves with personal data rather than needing to remember their account details. They are offered the option to pay in full, set up a repayment plan, or make a promise to pay; and critically, they can discuss all of these options with an agent. Calls regarding debt can be embarrassing


and inconvenient; texts, on the other hand, can be sent discreetly, and picked up after several hours of inactivity. They are not reliant on smartphones or


wi-fi and data, and the results are startling: over a trial period, a DCA instigated 6,716


30


relationship between the service provider and the debtor. Can bots further reduce the strains on


agents? Given that approximately 18% of the DCA’s customers engaged with an agent during the debt-collection process, being able to reduce this further is an attractive prospect. Non-AI driven bots follow a ‘decision


Your bot could prompt your customer to provide some simple details regarding income and expenditure, and then offer them an appropriate repayment plan, for example; or manage FAQs out of hours


SMS chats (two-way conversations over SMS), and 1,435 (21.4%) of these resulted in customers arranging a ‘promise to pay’ scheme.


Multiple text conversations An agent can manage multiple text conversations at once, using templates to speed up responses. This highly effective programme is helping


customers ‘cure’ their own accounts, in many cases leading to a sustained, positive


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tree’ model, which limit their scope; a US study found that about 30% of customer- service interactions were completed without the problem being escalated to a human. But if you could reduce your teams’ workload by 30%, allowing them to focus on the most complex cases and most vulnerable customers, most people would view this as a success. Your bot could prompt your customer


to provide some simple details regarding income and expenditure, and then offer them an appropriate repayment plan, for example; or manage FAQs out of hours. Bots are supported in Facebook Messenger,


WhatsApp, and Rich Communication Services (RCS) – the latter being of particular interest, as it is due to replace SMS as the default messaging app on Android devices over the next 12 months. It is projected to become the world’s largest messaging platform by 2021, so it is worth investigating.


Conclusion If you are now embarking on your digital transformation, and just removing letters and telephone calls would be a big step forward, do not panic; it is easier than you think to implement mobile collections technology, even with legacy software restraints, while keeping your customers’ needs in focus. CCR2


October 2019


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