Imagine peanut butter without jelly. Mickey without Minnie. A lock without a key.

Good, but could be better, right?

But that’s how lenders are operating right now with voice and digital servicing and collections channels.

The big miss‍

In the digital world, loan servicers use information to determine how best to engage with borrowers.

Teams often extract transaction data, demographics, and basic account information to create personae and customize targeted messaging and then execute test and learn strategies and improve their success over time.

On the voice side, a similar approach is used to prioritize account treatments based on internal and external (e.g. bureau) data. 

While both channels’ use of this internal and fairly stale data has been the case forever, channel strategy leaders have long wanted to mine better data from the most recent borrower interactions for the golden nuggets needed to act - items like reason for the call, reason for delinquency, or other powerful sentiment drivers - that could be leveraged to boost NPS and drive both efficiencies and better outcomes for all. 

That’s a problem. 

After all, once solved, both of these channels would be able to learn from customer interactions, and the information gained from one format could benefit the other. New information refreshes both sides’ channel strategy, persona assignment, messaging strategy, treatment strategy, and more.

The open opportunity to unite voice and digital is finally here‍

On the voice side, for instance, we can now pull this exact information from conversations that could help improve digital persona design and creatives.

For instance, let’s say a borrower tells an agent they are having difficulty paying because of a car accident, or a disability, or job loss. How could digital teams use that information to better target that borrower with more applicable messages and offers?

Similarly, on the digital side, if an SMS contact effort fails, that would be helpful for voice to know - is the number no longer current? 

Or what if the borrower replies and says, “Stop texting me,”? That could trigger a shift to voice contact with the knowledge that the phone number is correct and the borrower is active, but needs a different method of communication.

Or they might respond with, “I can’t pay right now, call me in two months,” which should definitely be passed on to the voice channel with an opportunity to arrange future payment.

How to make it happen‍

Ultimately, voice and digital can be united to create real-time event triggers. A borrower answers a call and says, “Don’t call me at work,” triggering a text - “Sorry to bother you at work. Is texting a better way to reach you?”

In other words, instead of running on parallel tracks, we could be gathering information from both channels and using them to better understand, serve, and collect from borrowers.

We sponsored a webinar with Quanta Credit Services and invited folks from Frost-Arnett and SIMM Associates to talk about this with us.

Missed it? Catch up with our recap right this way.

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See you there!