Scaling collections: 7 benefits of the right technology

We recently started a series of blogs about how growing organisations can scale their collections and recoveries. In previous pieces, we've looked at how you can use AI and what you can learn about regulatory compliance from the recent FCA fines levied against financial services organisations.

In this article, I want to talk about how collections technology can enable scale, improve customer experience, increase performance, make agents and processes more efficient, and provide insights.

How can technology help you to scale?

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to effectively manage customers in collections is more crucial than ever.

Selecting the collections technology that aligns with your goals will be pivotal in helping you to grow as a business, whether you're looking to build your own system or buy a commercially available "off the shelf" solution.

Here are seven benefits of getting this right:

• 1. Improving customer experience whilst managing increased volumes
• As organisations grow, their collections operations need to scale cleanly, ensuring service quality as demand increases, a key requirement of regulators.
• Selecting the right technology stack enables you to take advantage of the best of both worlds: supporting your business growth with the infrastructure and tools needed to handle increasing volumes of customers in collections, whilst simultaneously improving their experience.
• 2. Enhancing efficiency through automation
• Having the right self-serve digital capability, coupled with the ability to effectively provide personal support, is key to scaling, whilst reducing cost to serve and not negatively impacting customer outcomes. Automated platforms can also streamline tasks, reduce manual errors, optimise resource allocation, and improve overall productivity.
• By handling high-volume, routine activities automatically, your team can focus on the customers that need additional human attention, such as those in financial hardship or customers with vulnerabilities.
• 3. Mitigating risks and ensuring compliance
• Leveraging technology to put automated guardrails in place provides assurance that regulatory requirements can be met, helping organisations minimise compliance risks.
• In an environment where fines for non-compliance can be severe, the ability to integrate and automate regulatory safeguards within collections processes is invaluable, ensuring scaling at pace is safely executed.
• 4. Utilising real-time events and insights
• Modern expectations of regulators and customers alike demand real-time interactions and decisions. Nobody has the time or patience to wait for their account balance to update, and sending collections communication after a customer has just made an arrangement to pay is no longer acceptable.
• Real-time performance reporting and event-based analytics are essential for delivering hyper-personalised experiences and measuring the effectiveness of collections strategy in the moment. Is your technology stack truly real-time?
• 5. Optimising data management
• Your collections technology needs to allow you to collect and analyse large volumes of data, providing clear insights into customer behaviour and operational performance. When this is combined with other enterprise data, it creates feedback loops that enable continuous improvement through champion challenge, and provides insights into how to improve upstream processes, such as customer acquisition.
• Modern analytics tools help pinpoint process failures and inefficiencies, enabling targeted improvements. These insights enhance collections performance and foster a culture of continuous improvement, helping teams adapt and optimise with greater efficiency.
• 6. Empowering agents
• Technology helps collections agents become more effective at their roles, allowing them to be fully focused on high-value activities and providing exceptional customer service.
• Omnichannel engagement platforms enable agents to interact with customers across multiple channels, ensuring a smooth and personalised experience. Virtual agents can be implemented for routine tasks, freeing up agents to handle more complex cases and build stronger relationships with customers.
• 7. Having a Single Customer View (SCV)
• SCV is a crucial component of modern collections technology. By consolidating customer data from various sources, it provides a comprehensive view of each customer's financial situation, enabling more targeted and effective collection strategies and ultimately better service and outcomes. SCV also helps to prevent duplicate efforts and ensures consistency across different channels.

arum has a global team of specialists in collections and recoveries that can assist you with your technology growth journey.

If you're not sure where to start, we'd love to offer you a free one-day review workshop that looks at your entire collections operation (including technology), followed by a report of our findings and recommendations. This will help you to identify and prioritise areas to focus on as you scale.