Author Archives: Chris B

Saascoms Summit

The exciting launch of the Saas Comms Summit presents a new opportunity for councils and utilities to better understand the most effective collection strategies post lockdown.

This all-new Saascoms summit, will take place on October 13, 2022, from 11:00-15:00 at Stoke City Football Club and will be centred around the following themes:

The economic environment and how creditors can assist customers
The current state of consumer communication
Alternative communication methods in terms of technology and new data sources
How to create a more sophisticated portfolio of strategies

There will also be consultation workshops, the release of industry insight data and the Council Comms awards, recognising achievements within the industry for individuals and organisations. The summit will also include a limited number of places for hands-on help.

Furthermore, a sandwich lunch will be provided and a webinar hosted from 12 pm-1 pm, which will also be accessible to virtual guests.

“We want to explore who is thinking about how their customers want to communicate, what tools they have available and how they are satisfying this customer demand. In sum, how are they embracing consumer change.” said Paul Nield, director of Saascoms (formerly CCS) “We aim to explore how authorities communicate, in terms of hours of contact, and incorporating the different channels i.e. email, telephone, digital such as SMS, Whatsapp etc into comms strategies.”

The Saascoms summit event, according to Gerard Dugdill, publishing director at Credit Today, should expand on recent work done on Credit Today’s Keep Britain Solvent campaign, which aims to keep businesses and customers afloat following the lockout. As an example of a recent webinar, see Compassionate Enforcement.

“We hope this event can be an established fixture looking at how all creditors can enhance comms strategies with customers to explore best practices for the best possible industry,” he said.

The event is also supported by a variety of consultancy and law enforcement partners.

About Saascoms

Saascoms, formerly known as CCS, was founded in 2004 with the goal of providing large and medium-sized enterprises with specialised communication solutions that not only boost productivity but also cut expenses. We now deal with some of the largest blue-chip firms in the UK.

Our award-winning, time-tested methods of digital contact engagement help our goods and clients expand year after year. Specialising in digital customer interaction solutions and with extensive experience in Credit & Collections, having worked with over 25 credit & collection functions across the UK, Europe, North America, and Australasia.

About Sooth

Sooth Consulting’s mission is to assist business executives to improve the performance of their organisations. We work with individuals and teams to identify answers to operational difficulties in sales, service, and collections. The word ‘sooth’ implies ‘truth, actuality, or fact.’ The meaning of an old word is as significant today as it was before – critical ingredients in any valued relationship, whether with clients, colleagues, or customers.

With over 25 years of experience in industries ranging from telecommunications to healthcare, media, financial services, and utilities, we promote performance improvement in every aspect of the client operation.

Six Of The Best – Saascoms 2022 Credit & Collections Technology Awards Shortlist

Saascoms 2022 Credit & Collections Technology Awards Shortlist

Saascoms have been shortlisted for all six categories they entered in the 2022 Credit & Collections Technology Awards.

The awards celebrate the companies that have consistently raised the bar and pushed the profession forward through innovation.

The 2022 Awards will be held on Thursday, 17th November.

The Awards were launched in 2017 to reward technological innovation within the industry. The Awards highlight the success of companies and individuals who lead the way in enhancing credit and collections technology.

Now in its sixth year, the 2022 ceremony will celebrate the best in lending and collections innovations. Over the last four years, the awards program has expanded to recognise the development of technology, with new awards categories focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning added to last year’s category list, which was won by Complete Communication Solutions (now trading as Saascoms).

Saascoms nominated and shortlisted categories 2022:

Machine Learning in Credit & Collections solution
Best Use of Technology
Artificial Intelligence in Credit & Collections solution
Vulnerable Customer Identification & Screening solution
Customer Engagement solution
Contact Centre solution

We hope to build on our previous successes and will report back after this year’s judging.

Let’s chat about Chatbots.

If your business has an online presence and you engage with your customers via your website, you know how important it is to let them talk to you in real time. You may have great products and professional services, but do you have the time and resources to handle all the website inquiries? A Chatbot can help with this.

The more we browse, the less our attention span becomes, and as a result, we have less patience when ‘on hold’ and are left to twiddle our thumbs. So, it’s more important than ever to take care of your online customers as quickly as possible.

But how can online customer service be made better?

Chatbots can help with this. Chatbots are computer programs that mimic humans by using artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with customers in real-time by typing messages back and forth, engaging with the customer until the Chatbot has dealt with their requests or passed them on to an actual customer service agent. Even when you or other team members aren’t around, Chatbots are constantly working to help manage online visitors.

Fact: Businesses that put customer service first make more money than those that don’t.

Here are four tips to help you use chatbots as part of your customer service and support strategy.

When it talks to new users, a Chatbot won’t know what those customers want or why they’re reaching out. They have to figure out how to help users and solve their problems based on what they say in the conversation.

To ensure a Chatbot gives the same kind of communication experience as a human, it has access to the customers’ data, preferences, and personal information. This makes it easier to talk to them about what they need so that the Chatbot can solve the problem immediately. By asking a few key questions, the Chatbot can establish the customers’ requirements and guide them through the process to determine the best possible outcome.

Who are you?

With so many Chatbots to choose from, you need to consider your options. Even if they know they’re talking to a computer, no one wants to have a conversation with a robot. Adding human-like features to your Chatbot and, in essence, giving your brand a human touch makes all the difference. It is possible to create interactions that align with your company, its products, and its services.

People want to talk to people and feel like they’re talking to someone who gets them and cares about them. Utilising customer data and user information ensures your chatbots can quickly assess your customers’ requirements and offer solutions while acting like humans.
Chatbots help your business understand what customers want and how to deal with it. The more natural and human-like the chatbots’ responses are, the easier it will be to resolve customer enquiries.

Give excellent (and quick) support.

Customers expect to get help and have their queries solved quickly. Customers are more likely to stop doing business with a company if they think they are not being dealt with efficiently.

Chatbots are a great way to give users support in real-time and all day, every day. Customers want answers quickly, and chatbots can provide them with the information they need at any time.

You can program your AI to take care of consumers at all hours of the day and night, even when neither you nor your employees are accessible. Instead of waiting for you to respond, clients may get answers immediately from your Chatbot and continue navigating your website.

Give individualised suggestions.

If you don’t know what people want from your site, you will likely lose them immediately. Every customer comes to you with different problems, queries, and pain points. To move your business and its audience forward, giving each one the same amount of care and attention is essential.

Train your Chatbot to give consumers helpful product suggestions, advice, and solutions when they need them. If people aren’t sure what to look at on your site, showing them products similar to what they’ve already looked at will point them in the right direction.
Chatbots can ask users questions to validate and confirm their queries, which makes it easy to give them suggestions that are right for them.

Your turn.

You should consider implementing a chatbot to provide the best customer support online or improve your online customer service. When used right, they improve your customers’ experience, achieve better results and save your business money.

How will chatbots fit into your plan for customer service?

Saascoms Contact Centre Solution

The Saascoms Omnireach Chatbot centralises all non-voice communication to a single agent platform, including webchat, email, SMS and social media (e.g., Messenger/WhatsApp).
The digital assistant undertakes the frontend ‘heavy-lifting’, responding to FAQs without agent interaction. Additionally, the AI can verify the customer to offer more in-depth responses or hand over to an agent pre-validated. The purpose is to streamline communications, expedite resolutions, and give customers a 24/7 self-serve support function, improving the customer journey and experience.

The customer can communicate 24/7 via their preferred channel, switching between them during their interaction without needing to re-validate their ID.
Our clients report an increase in their collections of over 10% and a lower cost base than traditional telephony engagement by allowing customers to communicate via their preferred route.

Omnireach has an API integration function compatible with leading dialler technology, meaning agents can blend between voice and digital conversations, allowing contact centre management flexible resource planning.

The AI can understand customer requests by analysing conversations using sentiment, key phrases, and natural language processing (NLP). The Chatbot detects nuances in a customer’s message, and by machine learning, it becomes progressively smarter with each conversation to resolve up to 42% of all requests without human involvement.

Omnireach provides agents with a single view of all digital Omni channels, giving them a clear and straightforward window to all outstanding enquiries, making it easy for them to self-assign conversations and assist customers promptly. To further assist the agents, they can access customer profiles, spelling and grammar support, previous conversational history, foreign language translation, customer interaction history, and library responses.

Omnireach offers a specific DCA-centric AI Chatbot, trained over hundreds of thousands of client interactions within the DCA industry. Saascoms collections AI engine has monitored and analysed over 100 million conversations and agent responses over the last four years to ensure accurate conversational intent matching. It is fully scalable from 1 agent to 1000+ agents.
Sentiment and request analysis allows the AI to tag conversations processed by the tag action programming or workflow pattern. This conversation analysis means that when the bot functionality is exhausted, the AI routes the message to a dedicated queue such as the ‘Vulnerability Queue’. This identification ensures that if a customer conversation is vulnerable, it is routed to a dedicated queue and a team of agents. Other queue routing can be actioned based on sentiment, request, account number, or location, for example.

This advanced, analytics-driven intelligence defines a collections strategy and customer journey. This offers a single point of resolution via self-service and creates a more personal response.
Results

Q1 2022 stats show that 72.4% of conversations utilising Saascoms Collection and Arrears Chatbot are resolved on the first contact.

Two-way messaging has resulted in a ‘right party contact’ increase across energy and telecoms clients of 64% (compared to traditional voice and non-conversational messaging).
From April 2021 to April 2022, 38 million+ conversations were activated across Omnireach regarding collections and arrears.

Saascoms Omnireach chatbot is a multi-award-winning technology.

Omnireach has an AI function that not only detects vulnerability but can also match the category of vulnerability, i.e., suicide, self-harm, emotional, terminal illness, substance addiction, bereaved customers, third parties or financial distress (can’t pay you vs cannot pay rent/mortgage).

By detecting the vulnerability type, the Chatbot makes decisions on how to best handle the customer. For example, someone identified as suicidal or self-harm is immediately transferred to a live agent with specific training for handling this type of customer.

Discuss Chatbots with Saascoms

The benefits of SMS marketing

With the number of communication and social channels growing all the time, it’s getting harder to reach customers. SMS marketing is the best way to get in touch with them directly. With a 98% open rate, SMS is great for brands and marketers, and customers love how easy it is to use.

This article highlights the tried and tested ways to get the most out of customer engagement via SMS marketing.

SMS marketing?

SMS marketing is when a business sends out promotional text messages (SMS) to tell people about its services and products or share alerts and other time-sensitive information. Mass texting is another name for this type of digital marketing strategy. SMS marketing is a lot more effective than email marketing, but it works the same way.

How does the software for SMS marketing work?

SMS marketing software lets you send texts to a lot of people at once. After you have acquired a database of numbers, contacts, and clients, who have all opted-in, you send a text with a message, link, instruction or shortcode which links them to something specific online. You are now engaged with your contacts.

What can you do with SMS marketing?

SMS marketing has become an important element of any digital marketing program, and businesses can use it to attain a number of marketing goals. With SMS marketing, you can:

Increase sales by informing customers about deals, discounts, and limited-time offers.
Secure Channel Communication: Send a shortcode or validation access code that opens a secure line of communication.
Build relationships by letting customers respond back and forth with you.
Conduct surveys and ask questionnaires.
Engage your audience by sending important news and new content quickly through mass texting.
Hold SMS text-to-win contests or text-to-vote polls to get people excited.
Collect leads by letting possible customers sign up for text messages or send in one-time
questions.
Use SMS to follow up with leads and send them the occasional text message to keep them interested.

Now that you know a few of the things a company can accomplish through SMS marketing let’s talk about why it’s a good idea.

Businesses that use mass text messaging are getting a lot out of it, from happier customers to higher conversion rates. Most text messages (about 98%) are read. And 90% of them are read in less than three minutes.

With digital marketing platforms such as social media, you could have the best marketing message board in the world, but algorithms only display your content to a small portion of your followers, and with email, you can spend a lot of effort on layout and copy that ends up in the spam folder or is just ignored. Because of this, texts are the best way to market something. Texts are simple to send and almost always get read by the people you want to reach. 63% of business owners and marketers now plan to increase their text marketing spend over the next year.

How can SMS marketing help different types of businesses?

SMS marketing is a great way to reach a large number of people at the same time.
SMS marketing can be used to take reservations, send coupons, tell customers about weekly specials, and generate leads. Retailers wanting to increase sales use texts to keep customers informed of current offers, customer loyalty benefits and special discounts, all sent by SMS.

SMS marketing is used by gyms, hair salons, barbershops, garages and even fast food restaurants to keep them informed. Hotels and the travel industry use SMS to keep travellers up-to-date, informed, and in touch with their travel plans and documentation.
These are just some of the places where text messaging is used.

Here are some of the industries that use SMS marketing to their advantage.

Energy/utilities, Consumer Finance, Business Process Outsourcing, Third Sector/Charities, Retail, Banking and Finance, Automotive, Beauty and Hair, Call Centres, Competitions and Polls, e-commerce, Education, Emergency Services, Local Government, Healthcare, Human Resources,
Information Technology, Insurance, Manufacturing, Marketing, Real Estate, Restaurants and Bars, Sports and Fitness, Telecommunications and Logistics, Hotels and Accommodation, Social Housing, Car Dealerships, Cinema, Debt Collection, Event Management, Florists, Dentists, Hardware Monitoring, Travel Agencies, Property Management…..The list could go on…

How to tell how well SMS marketing works.

A common mistake is to think that SMS marketing can’t be tracked. In reality, you can easily tell if it generates a Return On Investment (ROI), just like with email.

Here are some common benchmarks for SMS marketing.

Rate of click-throughs (CTR).

Text messages are opened 98% of the time, and the average click-through rate (CTR) for links is 36%, while less than 3% of marketing emails are acknowledged.

Conversion rate.

This is the number of people who did something after clicking your link, like buying something. Once a text has been opened, 45% of users engage with the information they receive. Much higher than other forms of marketing communication.
How come it’s so high? We receive SMS via our mobile devices. Most of the time, we always have them with us and fully charged. The convenience of mobiles means we spend, on average, about three hours a day on our phones, which makes it less likely that SMS messaging will be missed..

Get your money back (ROI).

ROI shows whether or not SMS is making you money. Just look at the purchases made or changed because of SMS, subtract the cost of sending the messages, and divide the result by the total amount spent on SMS marketing.

SMS Marketing Best Practices: Do’s and Dont’s.

Text marketing is simple, especially if you know how to avoid common mistakes.

Here’s what you need to know for sure:

Even though you have a list of phone numbers, that doesn’t mean you can start texting them. Ensure you have consent. You must follow the rules set by the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) if you use SMS marketing. That means getting permission before sending even one message out the door.

Do make sure it is relevant.

Ensure the information, offer, and content is relevant to the person you are sending it to. The key here is to ensure the text they receive has a perceived value to them.

Don’t send too often.

Make good use of your texts. Recipients just ignore or start to filter their texts if they become too frequent, non-relevant or too repetitive. On the other hand, most brands probably only need to send one focused hi quality text per week.

Don’t be annoying.

Before sending a text, think about whether or not it sounds like a real person is on the other end. Customers are far more likely to respond or click on your message if it sounds genuine and written by a person.

However, if your text says something such as “Do you want cheap life insurance? Click HERE “, then customers are most likely to stop receiving your emails.

Marketing campaigns that use SMS.

If you use the tips above, you’ll be able to quickly build your list. The million-dollar question is now: what should you send? Here are the ideas we like best.

Using SMS to help customers.

SMS marketing can also be used for everyday customer service tasks. Build one-on-one relationships with customers and solve problems quickly and well by:

Setting up and taking care of appointments to cut down on no-shows.
Letting them know about possible problems with their order, such as a delivery delay.
Answering their most important questions about your products or services.
Texting also frees up your team’s time because they can talk to more than one person at once, which they can’t do when they make a call. After switching to SMS for customer service tasks, organisations can automate payment collection faster and close more deals.

In summary – SMS marketing.

SMS marketing is now used by a huge number of businesses. We’ve already seen that the list of industries and businesses is both long and wide. People are aware of the benefits, and it’s easy to use, but Even though SMS is very popular, it is still one of the least used ways to market. This has a lot of good things for businesses that are willing to try it. There’s no better time than now to get started.

Our new bulk SMS platform txtpro, launched in late 2024 is a self serve, bulk messaging platform, perfect for marketing campaigns. Just upload your data, write your message and schedule delivery.

Get started and discuss the benefits of SMS communication with Saascoms.

Learn more about our products

How can machine learning play a role in the development of the next generation of collections?

The future of machine learning in collections.

Because of factors such as growing inflation and rising costs of living, an increasing number of people are finding themselves unable to meet their payments or are now living with debt.

According to research, the rising cost of living is directly responsible for the fact that over 57% of individuals are already having trouble making ends meet. It is probable that this percentage will only continue to rise.

Because of this, it is more necessary than ever to understand your consumers’ circumstances and identify vulnerable people with a greater requirement for support. The availability of more data than ever before has provided businesses with an advantage in locating clients who require assistance and assisting them in avoiding payment delays. By doing so, companies have the ability to improve customers’ inclination to pay, even for the more than 57% of those who are currently having trouble making ends meet financially.

How can businesses boost the likelihood that their customers will pay them?

One out of every five clients who are financially vulnerable are now behind on their payments. In light of this constantly shifting economy, what strategies should businesses employ to ensure their continued viability?

Organisations that have access to data can identify consumers that pose a risk of not paying, differentiate them from customers who are able to pay, and then manage these clients to ensure that suitable solutions are delivered individually. By collecting insights on client behaviours, such as a lengthy series of on-time payments and only recent late payments, businesses can make better decisions about how to handle customers who may be struggling. This can help businesses manage customers more effectively.

In addition, the employees working in your contact centre, who are the ones most likely to interact with your most vulnerable consumers, can be better instructed and prepared to show the necessary empathy in the situations in which they find themselves. Recognising words, phrases, and acoustic features that show susceptibility is possible using AI-powered technologies such as Conversation Intelligence. Once identified, you can inform agents in real-time to provide improved assistance as they carry on conversations.

How can AI be of assistance?

Suppose a company wants to provide the greatest possible customer experience and outcomes. In that case, it needs access to technology that can help it unearth insights into the how, why, and when of the customer’s circumstances. These insights can inspire changes such as streamlining and automating procedures, enabling better informed and unbiased actions to be taken.

You can employ a proactive plan instead of a reactive one if you identify patterns that signal future customers who will pay late or not at all.

Implementing AI into the strategy of your business gives you the ability to gain a more in-depth understanding of the financial circumstances of your customers. This, in turn, helps improve customer experiences while supporting your business’s long-term performance and growth.

AI can be used in digital conversations to help identify potentially vulnerable customers and ensure their query is prioritised to the correct agent/response needed in line with the organisation’s own procedures and the FCA’s treating customers fairly initiative.

Saascoms Omnireach AI conversational technology is utilised by nine collections and arrears organisations in the UK, who, on average, process 2.8 million interactions per month. Sectors include energy, telecoms, vehicle finance, home shopping (catalogues), personal finance/loans, and student loans.

Learn how we can help

Debt Administration and Debt Management | The Figures

The majority of businesses are having to spend an excessive amount of their time and effort chasing down overdue payments.

Debt administration is now part of business process. Many businesses (32%) find that collecting debts takes up a significant amount of their time and resources when they could be using that time to direct their sales staff regarding which customers to do business with and which customers to avoid.

A little more than one-fourth of all companies spend up to three-quarters (between 51% and 75%) of their time chasing outstanding invoices. And nearly one-fifth of all companies spend even more than that (76% or more) of their time doing so. This accounts for 32% of all firms. 80% of the businesses, from pharmaceutical corporations to healthcare suppliers, spent more than 50% of their time on the phone or by email trying to collect money rightfully owed to them. Manufacturing companies also had difficulty getting their hands on cash; 44% of manufacturing companies spent more than 50% of their time attempting to acquire their money, and 28% spent substantially longer than that (76% or more).

Consequently, 43% of service sector workers spent less than 50% of their time chasing outstanding invoices, and nearly a quarter (23%) of those workers spent less than 25% of their time chasing money. In addition, it would appear that companies in the energy industry are in a better position, as 60% of the time spent by these companies was spent on overdue bills.
It is estimated that around one-third of those working in the information technology industry (32%) and nearly half of those working in banking and finance (48%) devote at least half of their time to the pursuit of overdue payments.

The development of Saascoms platforms makes it possible to automate the process of collecting past-due debts. Automating this process frees up cash flow for a business and helps it avoid costly legal action that is frequently ineffective.

Gary Brown, who established Debt Register, thinks the data is extremely unsettling. According to him: “In a perfect world, businesses would follow up on invoices before the due date rather than after the bills have already become overdue.” There are a variety of options accessible to the credit manager to help them deal with past-due accounts in a timely manner and free up their attention so they can concentrate on conducting business with organisations that pose a lesser risk.

The credit manager’s primary responsibility is, of course, to maintain a steady flow of cash. However, as part of this role, they are also responsible for collaborating with the rest of the company to establish appropriate credit conditions with customers and reach a consensus on who is and is not a reasonable risk. Credit managers will be under more pressure in these horrible economic times, so it is more vital than ever to have the necessary processes and tools to ensure their time is spent on the areas that require their particular skills.

Saascoms offers a range of products to help with customer engagement. We provide specialised communication solutions to large and medium-sized businesses that increase productivity and reduce costs. We work with over 25 Debt Management organisations and are considered a top 10 power company in the credit & collections industry.

Learn more about our products

Artificial Intelligence in Credit and Collections

Conversational commerce has grown significantly, especially during COVID restrictions. Consumers now expect to engage at their convenience, using multiple technologies.

It is predicted that by 2025, 85% of all customer service interactions will exist without person-to-person involvement.

Saascoms Omnireach is a conversational agent platform which centralises all forms of chat (webchat, SMS, e-mail, Whatsapp and other social media) onto a single engagement platform.
The customer can communicate via their preferred channel and switch between channels during their interaction without needing to re-validate their ID.

At the heart of the solution is a powerful and trainable “frontline” AI chatbot that communicates in 92 different languages and analyses conversations using sentiment, key phrases and natural language processing (NLP). The AI chatbot is contextually aware and, by machine learning, becomes progressively smarter.

This ‘virtual assistant’ has a pre-programmed ‘Arrears and Debt Resolution’ knowledge base taken from tens of thousands of interactions in a DCA environment and is used to train machine-learning algorithms that power our AI.

The AI engine has monitored and analysed over 100million conversations and agent responses within the Collections & Arrears environment over the last four years, ensuring our NLP engine has a 99.7% intent and sentiment match success rate. This makes it possible for the AI to identify up to 75% of the customer intents at the adoption stage.

By providing ‘frontline’ support to the agent function, conversational AI analyses chat quickly and in real-time to automate conversations, drive efficiency, and respond to customer needs. In the first instance, the AI will identify and verify (ID & V) the client via an API or data feed into the client CRM database. Once security has been passed, the AI Chatbot will accurately identify the customer’s intent and respond accordingly.

The Chatbot detects nuances in a customer’s questions and responses and gives relevant answers the way a human would. The conversation continues until a question has been answered, their problem has been solved, or until the request is transferred to a live agent.

Many tasks can be dealt with without the need for agent engagement, as the Chatbot takes the customer through a workflow process The Omnireach AI typically resolved 27% of all interactions with a single line response and 42% without live-agent involvement. The latest statistics from Q1 2022 suggest 72.4% of conversations engaging with the Saascoms Collection & Arrears Chatbot are resolved on the first contact.

Accurate identification of a customer’s requirements is key to providing a high-quality customer journey, raising engagement, providing better CSAT scores (typical 12% uplift) and improving outcomes. By accurately identifying intent, the AI can route more complex enquiries to the best-equipped agent team to deal with them. Conversation CSATS suggest 89.3% of customers were completely resolved with the Saascoms AI Chatbot.

Using AI and routing to a specialist team makes customer conversations more meaningful, and agents have more time for complex interactions. Collections have been proven to increase by over 10%. The AI is trained to quickly identify a ‘vulnerable’ customer and immediately divert to a specifically trained live agent where the query can be handled appropriately.

Agents have the ability to help train the Collections & Arrears AI engine. By copying content from conversations and adding them directly into the AI engine, the Saascoms platform will evolve and ensure AI can identify future conversational meanings.

The agent can then free type a reply or select from a branded template, which then adds personal customer information into the response via a link to the organisation’s CRM. When a response is registered within the Saascoms engine, it is added to the data pool for analysing and adding to the ML algorithm.

Omnireach AI conversational technology is utilised by nine collections and arrears organisations in the UK, who, on average, process 2.8million interactions per month. Sectors include energy, telecoms, vehicle finance, home shopping (catalogues), personal finance/loans, and student loans.

Learn More about Omnireach

We all know that inflation has reached its greatest level in 40 years; what now?

This has an effect on your customer’s cost of living, such as electricity and fuel bills, food, childcare, and so on. The situation is expected to worsen as a result of post-pandemic recovery and the war in Ukraine.

Businesses are affected as well, with increased salaries, supplier expenses, communication costs, and energy costs. Even the Royal Mail has raised its prices by about 12% in the aftermath of the pandemic.

According to Lloyds Bank, the majority of its customers have less than £500 in their savings accounts. The CEO went on to say that credit card spending was on the rise, with the fastest increase in 17 years.

Energy costs are a major concern for consumers since the average UK household’s gas and electric bills are predicted to quadruple from £1500 to £3000 per year. This represents a £700 increase from April of this year, with an additional £800 increase scheduled for October. This is a huge milestone in our industry.

Preparation is already underway:

The UK government is providing assistance for growing energy costs, however, this does not entirely cover the actual increase.

Many firms are starting to plan for this. In June of this year, the major UK telecommunications firms (BT, Openreach, Virgin Media, O2, Vodafone, Three, Sky, and TalkTalk) committed to proactively identify and help vulnerable consumers, assisting them in transferring to cheaper packages or agreeing to manageable payment plans.

PayPlan – the recent cost of living crisis summit.

PayPlan has been providing debt counselling and support for nearly 30 years and has seen tremendous demand. With almost 112k new clients supported, 2021 was their busiest year on record. They predicted that this trend would continue in 2022, with a 32% year-on-year growth for the same period in 2021. PayPlan expects an extra 30% growth in its services in the third and fourth quarters of 2022.

Perspectives from the industry

We at Saaascom met with numerous clients and industry experts to learn how they are preparing for the months ahead and would like to offer their perspectives on the following:

Purchase of Debt

They predict that the volume of assets sold would expand and that a shift in product mix might occur, with broad consequences for mortgages, utilities, and newly recognised goods like purchase now pay later, as well as financial services, which still lack regulatory coverage and maturity.

While debt acquisition prices have risen above forecasts in the recent year, an increase in volume and activity may cause prices to fall, allowing buyers to be more selective.

Furthermore, purchasing panels are often more concentrated now, given that members must comply with modern regulatory criteria and provide downstream assurance to originators, essentially an extension of their brand.

Right Party Contact (RPC)

RPCs in utilities have increased through outbound and inbound contact, however, RPCs in other sectors (such as banking) have remained consistent until 2022.

Payment Plans

Several collection agencies believe that while the outlook ‘appears’ stable today because they are setting up big volumes of repayment plans, they expect a significant increase in payment plan breakages in Q3 and Q4.

Make use of digital solutions.

All survey participants agreed that technology and digital services will be critical to increasing efficiencies during the next 18 months.

Self-Service – Few organisation websites allow you to share an affordability evaluation, with treatment tools available for longer-term payment plans or other support alternatives. Customers are frequently directed to call customer support in these situations, which can drive them to disengage.

Artificial intelligence (AI) – Uses technology to improve the consumer experience. Allowing AI to ID&V your customer before assigning them to an agent, as well as enabling chatbot support for frequently requested inquiries or call to actions, such as a change of circumstances, can free up agent resources. You can use AI to detect vulnerability in email, live chat, or two-way SMS discussions, and then provide a pre-defined workflow and agent escalation procedure to guarantee vulnerable consumers are treated with care.

Because more in-depth financial analyses may result in longer average handle times over the next 18 months, you can utilise AI to support and increase efficiencies and aid call centre availability.

Low-cost messaging – Royal Mail’s costs have risen by 12% since 2019. Those polled are now seeking for new ways to interact with customers. Secure digital letters, for example, are 80% less expensive, faster to deliver, and provide read receipt data, whilst SMS and Emails are great for lost contact, broken arrangements, or payment offers. They also prioritise ensuring that their contact strategy is comparable to their counterparts; features such as two-way conversational messaging are quickly becoming a significant business tool in Collections & Arrears.

Industry Response

What industry insiders are saying.

From business entrepreneurs, strategy managers, economists and a debt counselling charity.

“Everyone agreed that there will always be a need for agents; not all customers can or are willing to engage by other means.”
“Whilst agents will be needed; more accounts does not mean more people. Increasing automation, integration between systems and digital journey experiences will be fundamental to offering customers more choices to engage.”
“Digital forbearance solutions, integrated into your contact strategy and configurable per your client’s needs could well be the difference between weak and strong P&L.”
“The industry, apart from a few exceptions, has been slow to move with digital technology. How many businesses have a clear vision of where they are heading and how to get there?”
“I think technology is the direction of travel we see across finance, and I expect much more happening on this side than more agents being recruited.”
“There are always going to be those people that need that help face to face in a different way, but obviously, you’ve got a whole new generation of people where they buy now and pay later. Maybe their first foray into debt at a very young age, but they’re going to be so much more tech literate that they’re going to access advice and help that way, but we’ve always got to have some sort of safety net for those that are isolated”. (Jonathan Shaw Christians against Poverty).

How to increase your collection of final payments

“Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves,” they say.

Collecting small amounts of a final balance has recently been a major difficulty for utility companies.

Previous techniques for pursuing this type of payment entailed either sending a printed letter reminder or having a call centre agent contact the customer, but this raises two major issues.

The first is that if customers being chased had moved home, the communication would go unanswered. The second reason is that the cost of sending a paper letter or making a phone call would more than often outweigh the value of the sum owed.

If you’re looking for:

A technique that encouraged courteous, fair, and non-intrusive consumer communication.
A system that employs mobile-focused, intelligent, self-service technologies to improve consumer convenience while lowering service costs.
A new process that can replace any reliance on outbound activity from internal or external customer service.
A cost-effective solution based on the contact information available, with the option to automatically transition between communication channels.

…Saascoms has the answer

You can achieve all of the above while taking care of your customers’ needs and providing clear savings to your utility business by using Mailmaster to collect outstanding payments through mobile with a combination of communication channels, including SMS, email, outbound voice, and your own branded mobile web app.

How do we go about doing this?

Using Mailmaster, we can assist you in automatically choosing the optimal channel and message to send to each customer based on available contact information, the amount owing, and the reason for leaving, among other variables.

Your consumers can choose from various self-service payment solutions, including a dedicated mobile payment portal.

If an SMS message does not elicit a response, another channel, such as email, can be automatically sent. (Messages are automatically terminated if a successful outcome is achieved).

Clear, simple benefits

By implementing a digitally-driven strategy, you can eliminate the need for traditional paper correspondence and potentially reduce lengthy call volumes.

Increase payments by quickly and conveniently installing a payment platform that allows your customers to pay off their outstanding debts while on the move.

Discover More

6 stages in your delivery process that require SMS messages

Customers nowadays want transparency.

When it comes to online shopping, people not only demand speedy and free delivery, but they also want to know where their items are and when they will arrive. They anticipate that the retailer of their choosing will keep them informed at every stage of the delivery procedure.

While branded emails efficiently communicate updates, SMS order alerts enable retailers and etailers to contact customers in high-priority, time-sensitive circumstances along the delivery journey.

When should e-commerce companies use SMS messages during delivery?

Order and Order processing Phase

1. Send order confirmations

With an ‘order confirmation’ SMS, ensure clients are kept up to date on their order status. This prevents customers from contacting your customer care department to inquire whether their order has been confirmed.

Pickup and Transit Phase

2. Inform customers about an impending problem.

Don’t rely on carriers to communicate updates or communication that requires action by the recipient, such as changing the delivery address or rescheduling delivery times. Send an SMS to receive timely responses. Furthermore, messages made by companies during the delivery path drive up to 70% of buyers to return to the online store for a repurchase. This represents a sizable portion of economic potential.

3. Set expectations

You may rapidly notify customers about a potential problem with an SMS. This guarantees that the consumer is informed before the situation arises, avoiding any unfavourable thoughts about the delivery experience.

Delivery and Collection Phase

4. Ensure delivery success

SMS is effective since it can be delivered in the customer’s timezone. While clients know the day their parcel will arrive, remind them to be at home shortly before delivery. This decreases customer discontent, missed deliveries, and additional logistics expenses.

5. Send collection reminders

Trigger SMS messages only for important updates, such as reminders to collect items from self-collection locations or parcel lockers. Delivering this information at the appropriate moment is critical to customer satisfaction.

Returns Phase

6. Make returns simple.

The return process is sometimes neglected as a chance to retain clients and exceed expectations. A positive return experience might inspire clients to stay loyal to the company and prompt repurchases. Send an SMS to notify your customers that their returns have been confirmed and that their refund is being handled, so they don’t have to wonder while waiting.

With Saascoms configurable notification triggers, you can personalise SMS communication and precisely time it to impress clients and reduce unhappiness. Create memorable brand interactions with an improved delivery experience for your business.

Learn more about the potential of Saascoms Mailmaster SMS notifications for your brand to give an exceptional delivery experience.