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When customers miss payments, it’s up to collections departments and agencies to recover what is owed. This can be a stressful process for delinquent customers (often experiencing financial hardship) and businesses trying to balance recovery with maintaining a positive customer relationship and brand reputation. The addition of debt collection regulations further complicates an already delicate interaction. How do businesses consistently deliver a positive, productive and compliant collections experience?
In this article, we’ll explore how AI and automation can help organizations across all industries:
Using an intelligent virtual assistant (IVR) powered by conversational AI, collections departments and agencies can automate outreach to delinquent customers. In many cases, customers can then complete payment(s) through AI-powered self-service. For calls that need further assistance, automation can pass the context gathered from your IVA to your agents to help streamline resolution.
By understanding and analyzing customer sentiment, intent and emotions, conversational AI can assist agents through real-time coaching alerts and insights that drive empathy. For example, the platform can coach agents with appropriate rebuttals to customer objections or suggest language to help steer the conversation away from partial payment or settlement discussions.
Conversational AI can help increase data accuracy by transcribing calls in real-time and automating after-call work (ACW). This not only helps businesses comply with record-keeping and disclosure regulations; it also reduces the amount of manual work agents must perform after each interaction. Furthermore, AI can uncover deep insights from call data that a human would otherwise overlook. From sentiment scoring to reasons for non-payment, this information can then be used to further refine agent performance and the broader collections process.