Running a collections contact centre is possibly one of the hardest environments to manage. After all, their customers don’t really want to speak to them. So, if their customers don’t want to speak to them, how would passive voice biometrics assist when you need to hear the customer's voice and they need to, well, actually speak!
One key reason that makes passive voice biometrics in a collections contact centre viable is that there are – generally – lots of repeat calls. Passive voice biometrics delivers the biggest return on investment where a contact centre environment speaks to the same customer on multiple occasions.
What do I mean by this?
Organisations that run and manage their own collections contact centres in the early debt cycle will see the most benefit for the following reasons:
Firstly, the organisation is phoning the customer. They know who they are contacting and already have the customer's information. BUT, in order to comply with regulations such as ‘right party contact’, they have to ask their customers very frustrating and invasive questions which invariably irritates the customer. So, the moment the organisation speaks to the customer more than once, the benefits of passive voice biometrics kicks in and the agent no longer needs to quiz the customer as to their authenticity.
The opportunity to have a more conciliatory conversation which focuses on understanding the customer’s situation and hopefully encouraging the customer to engage more openly with your agents could mean the difference between resolving an arrears situation, versus being shut out completely.
Secondly, once you have your customer’s voice in your voicebank, you can reduce the average handle time (AHT) of your repeat calls, resulting in immediate operational efficiency and cost saving.
Thirdly, and this follows directly from the first two points, when you are regularly calling your customer, for example when you have agreed a ‘promise to pay’, the process along with the quantitative and qualitative aspects of that call can improve enormously.
Lastly, in the situation where the customer no longer wants to speak to you and claims that you have contacted the incorrect person, their voice print will provide confirmation that it is indeed the correct person, allowing your organisation to flag the call as such and eliminating time and money with data agents trying to ascertain new contact information.
Obviously, your agents would need thorough training and appropriate script development to help guide the conversations when utilising passive voice biometrics but just think, not only will hard costs be realised through AHT reduction, new contact information savings and auditable compliance but all the qualitative aspects such as better customer experience, improved environment for your agents AND a better brand image will reap the rewards.
Why wouldn’t you consider implementing this value-adding technology in your organisation?
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