The challenge: Handle 600K delinquent accounts a year in a cost-effective manner
This mobile, broadband and entertainment provider has around 50,000 accounts missing minimal payments and becoming delinquent each month. All with low balance, sub-£100 debts. This causes three big problems — potential write-offs of £40M a year if the debt is not handled well; high cost to collect this debt owing to the high volumes of low balances; likelihood of losing customers and revenue.
The provider had three goals: improve collections yield, reduce cost to collect, and collect in a way that maximised customer retention.
Our client had a right-shore service model in place. The key question on their mind was, could this work be handled offshore while maintaining quality metrics?
The solution: Offshore collections by voice calls and email
Firstsource provided a first party, white-label, pre write-off collections solution with an initial pilot offshore out of India.
This is how the solution works — customers entering delinquency are automatically recognised by the billing system; the system sends them an email with an invitation to contact the service centre to discuss repayment. Firstsource handles all interactions by phone and email while also offering customers a range of different repayment plans.
Details vary by customer. For example, those with a balance on a smartphone can have a three-month payment holiday on the device. While customers who contact the service centre before their services are blocked can still receive their service if they keep to their repayment plan.
The results: Offshore cost savings and better collections results
The pilot identified that this work can be handled offshore without affecting impact metrics, and now 90% of collections work, handled by 200 associates, is located offshore.
Moving the work offshore saves the client 35% in operational costs, equivalent to £1.2M per year.
What’s more, the offshore team delivers better results than the in-house onshore team did: 15% higher collection yields, and 15% higher retention. And customers are very happy with how their accounts are handled as the offshore team consistently achieves an astonishing +75 NPS.
