Building effective customer journeys within collections has never been more important to enable customers to make payments easily and access appropriate support quickly when needed.
But if the customer has the option to choose from many different channels, how can you ensure it all works seamlessly to provide the best possible customer experience?
In this blog, we look at some of the key things to consider:
1. Capture customer communication preferences
Storing the customer’s communication preference is critical – a one-size-fits-all approach will never work. It may sound obvious, but it’s then important to use these preferences in your outbound communications. This will not only improve the customer’s experience but also help you to meet your objectives. You should also be constantly adapting your approach, so if a customer doesn’t respond to a certain channel, think about avoiding or deprioritising it for next time.
2. Provide a full range of channel options
When it comes to inbound communications, the key is providing a wide range of options and ideally allowing customers the ability to switch easily between them – for example, if a customer starts on a digital self-service channel, they should be able to switch in order to speak an agent if they wish, ideally with little fuss.
3. Consider when to automate vs when the human touch is needed
There are many reasons why a customer might contact you, such as general enquiries, making payments, complaints, etc. You should consider which of these processes could be directed towards self-serve options versus those that may need interaction with agents. Self-serve often provides a better customer experience for simple tasks and also frees up agents’ time to focus on more complex matters. And don’t overlook the opportunity to automate specific parts of the process e.g., identification and verification.
4. Choose the right technology partners
A great customer journey needs to work in the real world. One of the main considerations when it comes to technology (be that a core collections system, mobile app, chatbot etc) is that it integrates with other systems. You’ll need this so that agents can see real-time updates of what your customer has done on a digital channel, or to stop your dialler calling a customer who resolved an issue earlier that day, for example.
Where should you start?
We’re producing an exclusive industry report about the use of voice versus digital channels AND offering a free benchmarking assessment of your capabilities so you can see how you stack up against the rest of the market. The only thing you need to do to get access to the report and the assessment is contribute to the report data via a 10-minute survey.
TAKE THE SURVEY HERE
Please also feel free to contact us at any time to discuss your customer treatment, technology, or digital needs.