What does it mean to have a viable digital collections strategy in 2022?
Consumers now definitely expect to encounter a wide range of digital engagement from financial services companies - engagement that can include SMS, email, and online payment portals - to engage with them, to assist them with servicing their accounts, and to help them make payments.
It has been clear for some time that consumers want a digital accounts receivable strategy from you. The trends all suggest that this demand is growing fast.
According to a recent, relevant CFPB report, "Digital engagement—whether reflected in enrollment in online portals, enrollment in mobile apps, opt-in rates to e-statements over paper equivalents, or electronic payment of credit card bills—is growing consistently across all age groups and nearly every platform type."
How should you approach your accounts receivable digital strategy in 2022? If you are ready to plan out (or reassess) your digital collections efforts in 2022, here are the top three places you should start.
1. Prioritize your Payment Portal
It’s no longer negotiable. Customers need the ability to pay online, which is why you need to prioritize a customer portal that, at the least, allows customers to pay what they owe online.
What’s more, your self-service portal is a low-effort channel (once it’s up and running) and a lower effort equals lower cost. Per Gartner research, low-effort interactions result in lower costs across financial services.
If you can only invest in one area of digital communication, invest in your payment portal.
2. Go Beyond Payments
Whether you’re planning an upgrade to your portal, or you don’t yet have one in place, your customer payment portal can (and should) serve many functions beyond just accepting payments. Customers should be able to get their account level basics, like balance, creditor name, etc., and payment histories. Adding the ability for customers to request paid or settled in full confirmations, payoff requests for real estate transactions, and statements means fewer non-payment calls, and frees up your agents to make outbound calls.
3. Optimize your Channel Use
Reg F takes email and SMS communication and makes them not just viable, but valuable.
Emphasis on outbound communication has gone from quantity to quality, and an omnichannel approach that involves digital touchpoints like SMS and email will increase right party contacts, reduce operational costs, and increase efficiency. With that, companies will have to focus on optimizing their channel use.
Of course, adding these contact methods into your strategy is complicated. And if all of your contact channels are not looking at the same data, it might get difficult to create a holistic contact strategy.
We can’t say for sure what will happen if you can’t, or won’t, explore and integrate solutions like SMS, email, and online portals. But we know digital collections will become a core expectation.
Erin Kerr is the Director of Content for iA Strategy & Tech - a digital resource for collections strategy executives - and the Executive Director of the iA Innovation Council. She is a seasoned receivables management professional, with recent experience in digital strategy and a passion for crafting digital solutions for a better customer experience.