John Sanders, Managing Partner & CEO
Collections and recovery will begin a reinvention phase that sheds the weight of aging systems and the slow rate of change adoption. Most traditional platforms lack an architecture that can support the intelligence, dynamic workflows and digital interfaces necessary for real digital collections. However, a cloud native solution enables critical functions of an account in the recovery inventory to operate and exist as independent components. Instead, operations will focus on cloud architecture as a foundational element that will enable modular collections. The cloud allows for real-time digital intelligence (using bi-directional micro-decisions and eliminating the batch process mentality). It will also usher in the frequent use of natural language understanding and natural language response to facilitate digital conversations that ensure consistent treatment across every channel (removing human interaction costs and focusing resources on the most difficult and complex customer situations).
The pandemic pushed the envelope as customers gained the ability and convenience of performing non-human digital interactions. This forced a change in consumer preference that has been capitalized on by all business sectors—thus making everyone compete for attention. So, in today’s climate, the best way to ensure that you are the first paid, is to motivate your customer and that means you turn into a marketer. All strategies will require marketing at the core. The world of collections and recovery will take on a greater marketing feel through all outreach and digital channels to achieve success.
Never has it been more important to evolve analytics and segmentation capabilities. It’s time to remove the patchwork back-end process that supports the skin on top of a payment portal. Interactions at the consumer level through any channel (whether human-to-human or through digital agents) will fail without the proper analytics driving decision points in the process.
The really bold prediction would be that collections & recovery interactions will begin happening through digital channels that at the time of writing, don’t exist on the market yet. Could you ever imagine 10 years ago having social media as a channel or even collecting via smart watch? Creativity and convenience drive the inventions that have changed the way we do things, and there is more on the horizon that will be rife with opportunity for collections & recovery. Of course, part and parcel with invention and transformation will be evolving regulatory compliance challenges.