Increasing Customer Contactability

The second tip of this series will continue to explore the different ways in which an organisation can improve the quality of its data in order to increase customer contactability and improve collections results.

Data Verification The customer’s contact information should continuously be verified and/or updated. This should occur with every interaction with the customer. The collection system should prompt a collector to verify a customer’s contact information whenever the collector speaks with the customer and should not allow a collector to exit an account until he/she has done so. The system should then automatically ‘date stamp’ the information once it has been verified and/or updated so that an organisation can monitor the ‘recency’ of its data. Collectors should be performance measured and incentivised based on the number and quality of contact information verified and/or updated.

Data Cleansing Services In advanced credit-granting countries there are a number of organisations that provide data cleansing services that analyse, report on and fix incorrect customer contact information stored in the organisation’s database. This is by far the quickest and most effective method for an organisation to improve the integrity of its data.

Poor data not only prevents an organisation’s collections department from being effective, but it also increases the costs of collections substantially. The direct quantifiable costs that are unnecessarily incurred because of incorrect customer contact information include:

The cost of dialling an incorrect number initially
The cost of making calls to directory enquiries
The costs of using external sources for data validation
The costs of maintaining staff for tracing customers without valid contact information

There is no doubt that accurate address and contact information is not only crucial to an organisation’s efforts in combating rising delinquency rates but also vital for managing spiralling costs.

In the next tip of the month we will consider alternative methods of communication that organisations can employ in order to increase customer contactability.

Charl Van Rhyn is a Senior Consultant at PIC Solutions, the largest customer management solutions company based in the Southern Hemisphere. He has over 8 years of credit and risk management experience as a practising attorney, specialising in collections during all stages of the delinquency life cycle. At MBD Attorneys, a leading South African debt collection law firm, he served both in the capacity as Director Litigation and Senior Accounts Executive. Key responsibilities included the management of key business relationships within the banking, financial services, furniture retail, telecoms, utilities and health & leisure industries. He holds a B. Juris and LLB degree from the University of Potchefstroom. He is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and a member of the SA Institute of Credit Management.

About PIC Solutions
PIC Solutions provides customer management solutions to a wide range of blue-chip organisations. We are experts in the fields of credit, risk and marketing and have an established track record of success powered by solutions.

For more information on how PIC Solutions can optimise the credit life cycle of your business please visit www.picsolutions.com.