On the phone

The phone is still the most effective method for contacting people. When the issue is collecting outstanding debts, postal mail in combination with inbound and outbound calls can be effective for early-stage debtors. But as debt ages, the phone is the primary tool for getting promises from people to pay back what they owe.

Although manual dialling is still used to collect debt, an automated dialler, also referred to as a “predictive dialler” or simply a “dialler”, provides a huge jump in productivity in collections. By placing calls in parallel and focusing on delivering only live speakers to collectors, an automated dialler can make collectors many times more productive.

In that sense, the phone is the most effective method for collecting debt, and automated dialling is the most effective method for using the phone to collect debt.

However, utilising an automated predictive dialler doesn't always mean getting the most out of it. The difference between the normal use and effective use of an automated dialler is often the key competitive advantage for a collections operation.

This practical guide focuses on strategies for effectively using automated dialling in collections.

Blending can be a very effective method for increasing debt liquidation rates. With true blending, a collections operation can make optimal use of its best collectors by dialling aggressively when the inbound load is low, and by slowing down automated dialling as the inbound load increases.

When a collections operation can make only so many calls each day, how does it optimise call volumes, ie, the list of accounts and numbers dialled? One approach is to contact those people first and most often who owe the largest debt. To rank accounts on this scale, some collection organisations calculate “contactability” and “collectability” scores for each debtor.

The phone is the most effective method for collecting debt.

Dave Paulding is Interactive Intelligence's regional sales manager for UK and Africa.

Getting the debtor on the phone is only one component of the ability to collect the debt, however. The relative skill set of the debt collector has a major impact on the ability to get a promise to pay. Therefore, a collections operation not only wants to call the right debtors at the right time at the right phone number, they also want to match up the more difficult and high dollar accounts with their most skilled agents.

This can be done successfully with skills-based routing, in which a collections operation assigns skills and proficiencies to collectors, and then associates specific skill requirements to outbound calls. But what happens if a company's best collectors don't arrive until after lunch, or are all in a lengthy meeting? An automated dialler can help fill the gap by matching up the minimum skill requirements of an account with available debt collectors before even placing scheduled calls.

Collection operations call them their “special sauce”, the tips and tricks they employ to get the most out of each dial. Some of these strategies include:

* Using local outbound ANI/caller ID
People are more likely to answer a call from their own area code, and getting more debtors to answer the phone this way is a powerful tool.

* Optimising a 'no answer' timeout
Most outbound dialler solutions make it possible to configure the amount of time a phone is allowed to ring before hanging up and determining the call to be a “no answer”. In North America, each phone ring lasts about six seconds and many answering machines are configured to pick up after four rings. To optimise 'no answer' timeouts, the timeout range must be long enough to allow the called party to answer. Given the answering machine formula of four rings x six seconds per ring, a range of 21 to 25 seconds is considered preferable for the 'no answer' timeout setting on an automated dialler.

* Leaving messages without spending an agent's time
Agents are often tasked with leaving messages on answering machines that get through to the agent. These messages are either the agent's actual voice leaving a scripted message, or the agent pressing a button or clicking something on their computer screen to activate a pre-recorded message. In many cases, even with a message that's pre-recorded, the agent must wait until the message completes before moving on. Added up over a full shift and numerous agents, any kind of manual process is inefficient. A far more efficient solution is allowing an agent to transfer the answering machine call to the system, which lets the agent move on to the next call while the system leaves a message.

* Dynamically changing phone number order
Calls to debtors during the day often focus first on the POE (place of employment) number, followed by a home or cell number (if allowed). After work, the order of dialling is typically reversed, if the POE number is dialled at all. Some collections operations create several different campaigns to change the numbers dialled and the order in which they are dialled. Using time-based rules, some automated diallers can automatically change which numbers are dialled and in what order. This allows one campaign to be created and managed, and saves cycle times for campaign management and agent transitions between campaigns.