PAYby CALL offers a secure telephone payment service with a bank card; and who says payment, says collection; because on the other side of any transaction there is also someone… Someone who sometimes finds it hard to get paid. For collection agencies, any technological aid is a good thing, especially if it has to do with telephone collection.
We know from ANGECO (National Association of Collection Management Entities) reports that, within the collection niche, the telephone channel is king: more than half of the contacts with debtors are established by telephone. Is it possible to take advantage of this fact to optimize recovery?
Some numbers
The debt collection market is strongly linked to the telephone channel. Despite the recent development of other channels (e-mail, instant messaging or callbots) that have joined face-to-face mechanisms (in person, physical mail), more than 56% of contacts with debtors are established by telephone.
In addition, 65% of amicable recoveries are made by telephoneThis is a huge market that, at European level, is worth a staggering 71 billion euros.
The downside, the limit to the development of this trend lies in the lack of adaptation of telephone operators and other intelligent telecommunication service companies to the current regulations that protect the rights of consumers and their data. Thus, barely a quarter of European companies comply with the legal requirements for charging by telephone.
“Here I catch you…”
Undoubtedly, the great virtue, the ingredient of success, so to speak, of card-based telephone collections is the fluidity it brings to the telephone collection process (also sometimes called “telerecovery”), enabling an immediate payment fully compliant with the regulation in terms of privacy and protection of personal and financial data.
The possibility of settling a debt immediately, easily and reliably, in the same call in which the debt collection operator contacts the debtor, ends in a high percentage of cases with the recovery of the debt. Especially if we are talking about small amounts (which constitute the biggest piece of the pie in this area), the indebted person is usually more receptive.
In this way, it is easy to see how the probability of successful collection increases, avoiding unnecessary delays (the classic “I’ll make the transfer later”) that can only serve to reduce the chances of payment. In the world of sales, it works; in the world of collections, it works.
Higher performance at lower cost
Nor should the economic factor be neglected in the implementation of a card telephone collection system such as PAYby CALL. As in any business, collection agencies need to cut costs in order to make their processes as efficient as possible without compromising service to their customers.
In this regard, the elimination of the figure of the human agent not only brings technical security to the process; it also necessarily implies a significant reduction in costs for the collection agencies, both in operational terms and in other aspects (process automation, extended schedules, savings in possible penalties for PCI DSS non-compliance).
Combined with the professionalization and continuous training that are already the norm in the industry, collection companies are on the threshold of a new era in which telephone collection by bank card is emerging as a cornerstone for business growth.
