The Effectiveness and Efficiency of AI in Debt Collection

In collections, ultimately you have to get into a conversation with your customer in some way to help that customer resolve their issue, regardless of how far behind in their payments they are (early, mid, or late stage).
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➡Resolution Through Conversation
While some customers may self-resolve by simply giving them a nudge, there are others that need a direct and personal conversation to sort out their query.
➡Traditional Method vs Conversational AI
When Webio clients switch to digital messaging from using dialers, they show three to five times more effectiveness in engaging customers.
➡Effectiveness of Digital Engagement
Engagement rates with traditional dialers can be as low as 3%, whereas digital methods (like conversational AI platforms) can achieve engagement rates between 9% and 17%, and even over 45%, depending on the conversation type.
➡Increased Conversations
So from an effectiveness point of view, digital messaging helps businesses engage with more people and have more conversations than ever before.
Will you need more agents to achieve higher customer engagement levels? The good news is that by using AI and automation, the answer is 'no'. In fact, you can achieve more with fewer agent resources.
➡Effectiveness and Efficiency Balance:
The key is balancing effectiveness with efficiency. While it's important to conduct more customer conversations, i.e. effectiveness (digital messaging is 3-5 times more effective than dialers), by bringing in automated digital messaging and AI, you also achieve great efficiency.
➡Making Financial Conversations Easy:
We at Webio manage millions of conversations every month and we know what works and what doesn't work. We have become experts in simplifying complex financial interactions through automation, which makes difficult conversations more accessible and manageable.
➡Customised Language Model for High Levels of Automation:
We fine-tuned our AI engine and built a customised language model specifically for collections. And it delivers a very high level of automation. If I look at just our last quarter, our clients were sitting at 78.2% automation.
➡Increased Productivity and Collections:
But what does this automation mean in practical terms? Typically, an agent in a contact centre might handle between 50 and 70 conversations per day. However, by using digital channels such as SMS and WhatsApp, which allow for asynchronous communication, agents can handle between 380 and 420 conversations daily. This demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of digital tools which typically lift collections by an average of 10%.
➡Engage Customers in their Preferred Channels
It's proven that engaging customers through their preferred channels not only increases the quantity of interactions but also improves their quality and, by extension, leads to better outcomes for the business.