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industry: Auto Finance

Seamlessly Integrate Conversational AI with Your CRM Platform Using RPA

Posted on by Simone Somekh

When you adopt a Conversational AI solution for your collection business, one of the first challenges is getting it to exchange information with your company’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform. In this article, we’ll explain how you can integrate Skit.ai’s solution with your CRM system using a robotic process automation (RPA) approach. This method can save you time and money while requiring minimal technical expertise.

The Importance of CRM Software for Collection Agencies

CRM software is essential to gather, organize, and manage your accounts’ information. The benefit of integrating your Conversational AI solution with your CRM system is to easily personalize calls and quickly fetch consumer data in order to achieve end-to-end automation.

Whether it’s an outbound call—and your bot is calling a consumer to collect payment—or an inbound call—in which a consumer may call to request information on their account—you’ll need the bot to have access to the data.

The Challenges of Achieving a Conversational AI & CRM Integration for Collection Agencies

Collection agencies that want to adopt Conversational AI have a options to give the solution access to their CRM data.

To get access to CRM data, flat-file transfers and middleware are two ways to avoid a complex integration requiring building new APIs. It’s important to note that flat-file and middleware are not considered actual integrations.

SFTP Flat-File Transfer:

  • What it is: Campaign files are transferred directly from one system to the other—from the agency’s systems to the Skit.ai servers—usually via a Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
  • The advantage of flat-file transfers: This approach is very simple to execute, especially for basic data exchanges, requiring no IT effort and resources.
  • The disadvantage of flat-file transfers: This method does not provide real-time updates and is not automated, requiring the collection agency to handle file uploads on a regular basis.

Middleware Approach:

  • What it is: The middleware approach enables the Conversational AI platform to access the collection business’ CRM platform and store its encrypted data in the platform’s database. Additionally, every time the AI solution handles an inbound call with a consumer, it creates an SFTP file on the call and then uploads it on the client’s server.
  • The advantage of the middleware approach: It’s a more scalable solution and it’s good for inbound use cases, as it enables the Conversational AI solution to access consumer data.
  • The disadvantage of the middleware approach: It requires setup and maintenance and does not provide real-time updates, as the transfers only occur at regular intervals (e.g., once a day). It also can’t be used for outbound use cases.

API Integration:

  • What it is: An Application Programming Interface (API) enables different software applications (such as a CRM and a Conversational AI platform) to communicate with each other.
  • The advantage of API: It allows the Conversational AI solution to seamlessly access CRM data in real-time and in a structured manner. The CRM is updated in real-time with the outcomes of each interaction. Another benefit is that once the API is built and implemented, no further manual intervention is needed.
  • The disadvantage of API: APIs need to be available or custom-built, and they require programming expertise to implement and manage. CRM platforms usually don’t provide ready-made API integrations. This method requires a longer go-live timeline.

Due to the disadvantages of each method, we’ve adopted an alternative approach to solving this challenge.

What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Robotic process automation (RPA) involves using bots to automate repetitive tasks and workflows by mimicking human actions to interact with systems and applications.

With RPA, the Conversational AI platform can automatically access a CRM without requiring an API setup. The collection business grants the bot access to the CRM platform and whitelists it to ensure that the server is recognized as secure. The RPA bot functions as a live agent, logging into the CRM system and interacting with it directly, without the need for integration.

This approach requires no IT effort on behalf of the collection business utilizing Conversational AI, resulting in significant cost savings.

How Does an RPA Bot Impact Debt Collection Use Cases?

An RPA bot with access to a collection agency’s CRM can do the following:

  • Fetch account information such as due balance
  • Update the CRM with promise-to-pay (PTP), payment date, and other outcomes
  • Add notes to the CRM, e.g. reminder to call consumer on payment date

All this can be automated and executed without any human intervention.

The RPA method only works with cloud-based CRM platforms, such as Finvi, Collect!, and Debtrak. It does not work with on-premises CRMs, such as CollectOne, Debtmaster, Latitude, and Gcollect. 

Curious to learn how Skit.ai can integrate with your existing CRM? Request a demo with one of our experts!

Contain BHPH Delinquencies with Multiple Follow-Ups

Posted on by Simone Somekh

Buy Here, Pay Here car dealerships need to reach all of their active customers frequently and effectively. Conversational AI can help them do so in a scalable and cost-effective way.

Artificial intelligence is transforming the way car dealerships communicate with borrowers. Thanks to the use of interactive virtual assistants, dealerships are now able to automate intelligent, two-way conversations over multiple channels—voice text, email, and chat. This technology is emerging as a game-changer thanks to its cost-effective and scalable nature.

Based on data from our customers, we have seen that connectivity for a given set of accounts increases proportionally with retries. In other words, to boost connectivity, you should perform multiple follow-ups using Conversational AI.

Connectivity tends to peak at around 5 retries. The frequency and spacing of the retries can be programmed in compliance with TCPA requirements and state regulations.

The graphic below from a collection agency shows that, with 5 retries, the connectivity rate doubles.

Here are our tips to maximize your connectivity performance and boost revenue recovery:

  1. Perform at least 5 contact retries per campaign, in compliance with federal and state regulations.
  2. Leverage multiple communication channels, all automated with AI: phone calls, SMS, email, and chat.

Curious to learn more about how Conversational AI can enhance your collections strategy? Book a free demo with one of our experts.

How AI Text Messaging Automation Helps Buy Here, Pay Here Dealerships

Posted on by Simone Somekh

Buy Here, Pay Here dealerships, like any business handling customer payments, face challenges in communicating with borrowers. These businesses need to regularly and effectively remind customers about upcoming payments. However, limited staff and resources mean they can’t make unlimited calls or send countless reminders; so, ensuring payments keep flowing can be tricky.

Automated text messaging with Conversational AI is emerging as an ideal solution to these challenges. The adoption of a new, efficient communication channel for customers can significantly boost BHPH collection operations.

Powered by Generative AI, text message automation enables two-way, multi-turn, intelligent conversations between lenders and borrowers. Buy Here, Pay Here businesses are now adopting this technology to communicate with consumers effectively and affordably, helping them make payments on time.

In this article, we explore the potential of Conversational AI-powered text message automation in transforming the Buy Here, Pay Here industry, not only in terms of customer communication but also operational efficiency.

Why Conversational AI and Why Text Messaging?

Conversational AI is transforming collections into a more adaptive and efficient operation for dealerships. Buy Here, Pay Here dealerships have been using Voice AI to automate outbound collection calls, yielding impressive results. Now, industry leaders are extending additional self-service channels to consumers, including text messaging automation with AI.

  • Text messages have a remarkably high open rate of 80-99%.
  • About 90% of text messages are opened within 3 minutes of receipt.
  • Click-through rates with SMS can vary significantly but typically lie between 15-30%.

Conversational AI facilitates two-way, intelligent conversations with customers, answering questions and providing context-based information. Whether used for automating phone calls or text messages, Generative AI allows auto finance companies to optimize their recovery strategy.

Text message automation is great because it helps businesses stay in touch with customers regularly. Instead of playing phone tag or feeling annoyed by lots of calls, customers can chat whenever they want, in a way that’s easy for them.

AI-powered Text Messaging Turbocharges Outbound Outreach

How can you effectively incorporate AI-powered text messaging capabilities into your collection strategy?

A dealer wants to be able to reach all of its active customers frequently and effectively. While maintaining a dedicated staff is crucial, you can only afford so many live agents and they can only handle so many calls. Automation with artificial intelligence is essential to scale the number of calls or outreach via other channels such as text messaging.

Additionally, it’s important to diversify your communication efforts, so adding channels such as SMS alongside phone calls can greatly increase your chances of reaching all customers.

To adopt Conversational AI, there is no need to have dedicated IT staff on board. The solution can be deployed in as fast as 24 hours, so you can initiate your campaign as soon as tomorrow.

When applied to text message automation, Conversational AI enables auto finance companies to:

  • Reach borrowers on their smartphones, allowing them to reply at their convenience
  • Achieve scalability by handling as many conversations as needed
  • Send frequent reminders at every step of the collection cycle to maximize payments
  • Facilitate two-way, intelligent conversations with borrowers
  • Reduce the load on live agents for routine communication and outreach

Thanks to the scalable nature of AI automation, you can contact your customers as frequently as you want, empowering your team of live agents to handle more complex and revenue-generating tasks and perform their jobs more efficiently.

Additionally, offering self-service alternatives to live interactions will positively impact the customer experience (CX).

If you’re interested in learning more about how Conversational AI can enhance your collections strategy, use the chat tool below to schedule an appointment with one of our experts!

Automate Your Auto Finance Collections with AI-Powered Text Messaging

Posted on by Simone Somekh

Auto finance companies, like all businesses dealing with consumer payments, face a few innate challenges when it comes to communicating with borrowers. Regular outreach to borrowers to remind them of future and due payments is an essential part of the day-to-day operations of an auto finance business to avoid delinquencies.

Common challenges include resource limitations, rising costs, and the inability to send out frequent reminders and handle all inbound calls. As such, reaching consumers at all stages of the collection cycle—from pre-due date reminders to late-stage collections—can be a complex process.

Two possible solutions to these challenges are leveraging top-tier technology and diversifying communication methods. Conversational AI and automated messaging have ushered in new, efficient communication channels with customers, significantly boosting auto finance collection operations.

Powered by Generative AI, text message automation enables two-way, multi-turn, intelligent conversations between lenders and borrowers. This technology is now emerging as a pivotal tool for auto finance companies to communicate with consumers in an effective and cost-efficient manner, helping consumers make payments on time and avoid charge-offs and repossessions.

In this article, we explore the immense potential of Conversational AI-powered text message automation in transforming the auto finance sector, not only in terms of customer communication but also operational efficiency.

Why Conversational AI and Why Text Messaging?

Conversational AI is transforming auto finance collections into a more adaptive and efficient operation. This technology employs natural language processing to understand and respond to customer inquiries, making the process more conversational and less transactional.

Auto finance companies have been using Voice AI to automate both inbound and outbound collection calls, yielding impressive results. Now, industry leaders are extending additional self-service channels to consumers, including text messaging automation with AI.

  • Text messages have a remarkably high open rate of 80-99%.
  • About 90% of text messages are opened within 3 minutes of receipt.
  • Click-through rates with SMS can vary significantly but typically lie between 15-30%.

Conversational AI facilitates two-way, intelligent conversations with customers, answering questions and providing context-based information. Whether used for automating phone calls or text messages, Generative AI allows auto finance companies to optimize their recovery strategy.

The core advantage of text message automation is that it maintains a regular, timely, and non-intrusive communication line with customers. Instead of ignoring calls or feeling exasperated with numerous phone conversations, customers can engage at their convenience and in a format that feels most natural to them.

AI-powered Text Massaging Turbocharges Outbound Outreach

How can you effectively incorporate AI-powered text messaging capabilities into your collection strategy? Let’s start with the outbound use case.

An auto finance business wants to be able to reach all of its active customers frequently and effectively. While maintaining a dedicated staff is crucial, you can only afford so many live agents and they can only handle so many calls. Automation with artificial intelligence is essential to scale the number of calls or outreach via other channels such as text messaging.

Additionally, it’s important to diversify your communication efforts, so adding channels such as SMS alongside phone calls can greatly increase your chances of reaching all customers.

When applied to text message automation, Conversational AI enables auto finance companies to:

  • Reach borrowers on their smartphones, allowing them to reply at their convenience
  • Achieve scalability by handling as many conversations as needed
  • Send reminders at every step of the collection cycle—including pre-due, early-stage, late-stage, and high-risk—to avoid delinquencies
  • Facilitate two-way, intelligent conversations with borrowers
  • Reduce the load on live agents for routine communication and outreach

24/7 Customer Service with Inbound Conversational AI

Now, let’s move on to the inbound use case.

As you intensify your outreach efforts and increase the number of outbound communications, borrowers will start contacting your business to make payments or inquire about their accounts, and that’s when you’ll know it’s important to augment also your inbound service with Conversational AI.

Conversational AI gives you the ability to reduce wait times to zero seconds and assist borrowers immediately. When you deploy text messaging automation for inbound communications, you offer 24/7 customer service able to assist customers at any time of the day and week.

Offering self-service alternatives to live interactions will positively impact the customer experience (CX).

Augmenting inbound communications with AI enables your live agents to focus on complex queries and important tasks. As the AI solution addresses the low-hanging fruits, your agents are empowered to do their job more efficiently.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Conversational AI can enhance your collections strategy, use the chat tool below to schedule an appointment with one of our experts!

Why Auto Finance Companies Are Looking to Artificial Intelligence for 2024

Posted on by Simone Somekh

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, massive supply chain delays, and the ongoing recession, auto finance companies have had to be as competitive and forward-thinking as possible. After an unprecedented year, many companies are looking to invest more in technology, specifically artificial intelligence, in 2024.

What’s Happening in the Auto Finance Industry Right Now

At the moment, four facts are defining the auto finance industry:

  • Car prices have never been as high as they are right now
  • Record car prices are leading to higher auto loans debt
  • Auto loan interest rates are climbing
  • Auto loan delinquencies are increasing

Let’s break these statements down with the help of a few data points.

Car prices are still very high: After hitting record prices in 2022, the average price for a new car was at $48,247 at the end of 2023. Used car prices were down to $27,300 in June 2023.

High car prices = higher auto loan debt: Auto loan balances hit a record $1.6 trillion in Q3 2023. Between high interest rates, high inflation, and high prices, affording a car has been increasingly difficult for consumers.

Interest rates are climbing: Interest rates are very high; we’re looking at 7.03% for new cars and 11.35% for used cars.

Delinquencies are increasing: Delinquency rates reached their highest level in almost 30 years at the end of 2023. This is likely due to the increase in loan size, interest rates, and monthly payments.

Financial institutions, in general, have been eager to adopt AI solutions to process loans and vet borrowers. But AI can do much more than professionals in the auto finance field might expect.

The Different Uses of AI in the Auto Finance Industry

With the high demand for auto loans, providers have been adopting new solutions to streamline operations. One of the biggest focuses in auto finance right now is the digitization journey—starting with digital contracting. Digitization makes operations more efficient and scalable, helps to improve compliance, and enhances the customer experience. Yet, artificial intelligence can achieve much more than just “going paperless.”

AI can expedite many processes, saving time, money, and other resources; it can generate data-driven predictions much faster and more accurately than humans. While AI can be extremely helpful, it does not substitute human work but rather augments and simplifies it. Paired with human expertise, AI can be an incredible asset for auto finance companies.

Here are some of the applications of AI:

Document management with AI: Document management with AI enables companies to classify, process, and cluster documents, extract data, secure sensitive information, and recognize signatures. This can be useful when processing applications; it helps reduce errors, improving the consistency and accuracy of the data.

Decisioning with AI: AI can assess risk and help auto finance companies in the approval process. While AI should not make irreversible decisions independently, it can help companies to make data-driven decisions.

Predictions and behavioral models with AI: Predictive models allow auto finance companies to better understand their customer base and its behavior as they identify patterns that can be useful for future decisions.

Customer service and communications with AI: Chatbots and voice bots have the ability to transform and streamline customer service, improving the company’s customer experience and providing a distinct competitive edge.

Collections and payments with Voice AI: Conversational Voice AI can also help auto finance companies in the collection process, as it automates outbound calls to customers, reminding them of outstanding payments and collecting payments over the phone.

Agent intervention with AI: Thanks to AI-powered predictive models, auto finance companies can flag accounts that require additional communications and facilitate agent intervention.

Voice AI Is the Big New Auto Finance Trend in 2024

Of all the existing trends we’ve mentioned, Voice AI seems to be the one that will get a spotlight in 2024. More providers are turning to Voice AI to automate customer service calls for both inbound and outbound use cases.

Voice AI companies like Skit.ai develop voice bots to augment the activity of human agents, handling the majority of repetitive, mundane calls.

Collection calls and payment reminders are one category of customer interactions that a Voice AI solution can easily handle from start to finish—from dialing the number and establishing right-party contact to engaging in a conversation with the customer and collecting payments via gateway.

The Voice AI platform enables auto finance companies to call thousands of different customers simultaneously, sending them reminders and collecting payments on-call or via a third-party gateway. The Voice AI platform can be easily integrated with multiple tools and applications, such as telephony platforms, CRM systems, payment gateways, and messaging tools; all while complying with the latest laws and regulations.

Context is critical: The Voice AI solution keeps track of the information obtained from the customers, feeding the data to the CRM in real-time and providing helpful analytics for future action.

As a result, companies adopting Voice AI can collect payments more efficiently, saving a lot of time and money they would otherwise spend if they did everything manually.

Voice AI can be adopted for many use cases, not just payments and collections. Voice bots can be employed for both inbound and outbound use cases, customer service, and other types of communication.

Interested in learning more about how Conversational AI can transform the auto finance industry? Schedule a call with one of Skit.ai’s experts using the chat tool below.

Skit.ai’s Augmented Voice Intelligence Platform Takes a Giant Leap with Generative AI

Posted on by Harshad Bajpai

Skit.ai’s Augmented Voice AI Platform is now powered by Generative AI. With the incorporation of Generative AI, we are taking a giant step forward and boosting the capabilities of our Conversational Voice AI solution. The interactions with consumers are about to become more natural-sounding and complex, leading to an improvement in customer experience (CX) and better results for collection agencies using Voice AI.

At Skit.ai, we embrace the future and go beyond industry standards and expectations.

How Generative AI Impacts the Capabilities of Skit.ai’s Augmented Voice Intelligence Platform

With the ongoing application of large language models (LLMs), we are seeing a big jump in the conversational capabilities of our solution:

Higher Conversational Accuracy: LLMs are capable of understanding consumer interactions through an improved understanding of context, sentence parsing, and response accuracy, leading to significantly higher conversational accuracy.

Better Handling of Complex Conversations: Generative AI enables our voicebots to better handle more complex interactions that were earlier escalated to human agents. This improvement can reduce the percentage of call transfers from the Voice AI solution to the company’s human agents.

Out-of-scope Calls: The LLM’s ability to grasp a wide range of questions and topics enables our voicebots to better handle out-of-scope utterances and calls.

Natural Utterances: The Voice AI solution is able to express a wide variety of natural-sounding utterances that improve the quality of the interaction.

Faster Voicebot Creation: Incorporating Generative AI give a big boost to the speed at which new voicebots can be created as the inherent complexity and effort involved in the design, and creation is a fraction of earlier effort.

Massive Performance Gains with Generative AI Springboard

In addition to the massive gains we are seeing thanks to LLMs, we intend to take this exercise even further and enable our voicebots to outperform human agents and collectors.

Going Beyond Human Agent Performance

An agent’s performance rests on two things: the ability to communicate and technical skills. At Skit.ai, we’ve seen that, with current LLMs, we can achieve superlative communication skills, and by training extensively with end-user data, we can achieve a high degree of technical skills. Hence our solution can excel on both fronts.

To share a rough estimate: the best-performing agent finds success on 5% of the calls (out of all connected calls), while low performers convert about 2% of the calls.

With Generative AI, we take a big jump. From the current voicebot conversion capability of around 1-2%, we expect the performance to jump 3-4 folds. Beyond this, our Reinforcement Learning platform learns from outcomes to personalize the conversation to figure out the ideal strategies, learning from thousands of daily conversations.

Better and More Natural Spoken Conversations

Generative AI, with its unparalleled conversational capabilities, needs to be complemented with equally capable speech synthesis and understanding systems that produce the right speech given the output from LLMs. And that is one of the major areas from the many below:

  • A more natural-sounding TTS (text-to-speech) voice
  • Conversational context handling prosody of generated audio
  • Full duplex and backchannels in speech conversations

Ultimately, we will be able to deliver the most engaging conversations that delight consumers by solving their problems faster and better than human agents.

The Business Outcomes of Incorporating Generative AI

Below are five major impact areas we will move the needle on:

Higher Collection Rate, ~5%: This is a difficult number to quantify, but as the incorporation of Generative AI matures, we expect its collection capability to move beyond 5%, surpassing even the best of human agents.

Lower Agent Dependency, reduction by 50-80%: As the voicebot will be able to handle more complex queries, we expect a 50-80% reduction in agent touch points.

Higher Resolution Rate, ~100%: Better accuracy and conversations with higher engagement will help us achieve a conversational resolution rate close to 100%.

Creating New Voicebots: The effort to create new voicebots will see a significant dip, as the complexity will be remarkably lower.

Entering New Markets with Ease, 15X faster: Entering new markets and training for new use cases and applications will require less effort and resources. We are estimating the process to be 15X faster.

What’s Next

Though the improvements in our Augmented Voice Intelligent Platform are visible and clear, we will further our efforts to achieve greater performance gains and stay ahead of the curve.

To learn more about how Voice AI can help support your collection efforts through call automation, schedule a call with one of our experts using the chat tool below.

An Unbiased Look into the Positive Side of Voice AI

Posted on by Harshad Bajpai

Artificial intelligence is experiencing exponential innovation. Generative AI, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and other AI models have captured popular attention, but they have also raised serious questions about the issue of ethics in machine learning (ML).

AI can make several micro-decisions that impact such real-world macro-decisions as authorization for a bank loan or be accepted as a potential rental applicant. Because the consequences of AI can be far-reaching, its implementers must ensure that it works responsibly. While algorithmic models do not think like humans, humans can easily and even unintentionally introduce preferences (biases) into AI during development and updates.

Ethics and Bias in Voice AI

Voice AI shares the same core ethical concerns as AI in general, but because voice closely mimics human speech and experience, there is a higher potential for manipulation and misrepresentation. Also, people tend to trust things with a voice, including friendly interfaces like Alexa and Siri. 

Call automation for call centers and businesses is not a new concept. Unlike computerized auto dealers (pre-recorded voice messages) like Robocall, Skit.ai’s Voice AI solution is capable of intelligent conversations with a real consumer in real-time. In other words, Voice AIs are your company representatives. And just like your human representatives, you want to ensure your AI is trained in and acts in line with company values and displays a professional code of conduct. 

Human agents and AI systems at any given point should not treat consumers differently for reasons unrelated to their service. But depending on the dataset, the system might not provide a consistent experience. For example, more males calling a call center might result in a gender classifier biased against female speakers. And what happens when biases, including those against regional speech and slang, sneak into voice AI interactions? 

In contrast to human agents, who might sometimes unintentionally display biases, Voice AI follows a predetermined, inclusive script while strictly adhering to guidelines that prioritize consumer satisfaction and compliance. This level of professionalism eliminates the potential for misbehavior and creates a positive consumer experience. 

Our team is always potentially looking out for any potential bias that accidentally seeps in, as ‘biases’ as constantly evolving. One thing can be acceptable today, but may bee seen as a bias tomorrow. At Skit.ai our skilled team of dedicated designers meticulously construct the dialogue patterns to guarantee balanced responses. Following these predefined scripts allows our Voice AI solution to offer consistent, unbiased interactions, thus establishing an inclusive user experience. This emphasis on conversation design aids us in overcoming potential biases that may surface in human interactions, thus securing a more balanced and impartial user experience.

Consumer Convenience and the Growing Preference for Voice AI

Consumers increasingly prefer interacting with Voice AI rather than human agents due to the convenience it offers. Voice AI allows users to communicate naturally through voice commands, eliminating the need to type or navigate complex menus. This convenience aligns with the preferences of many individuals who find it easier and more natural to speak rather than type. Furthermore, Voice AI is available 24/7, providing round-the-clock support without the need to wait for human agents. 

This instant access to information and assistance enhances consumer satisfaction and can lead to faster issue resolution. Additionally, voice interactions can be personalized and tailored to individual preferences, creating a more personalized and engaging consumer experience. The convenience and preference for voice-based interactions make Voice AI a valuable tool for meeting consumer expectations.

Building Ethical Voice AI 

Empathetic conversational design eliminates bias. At Skit.ai, we’re dedicated to developing leading-edge Voice AI technology. Our mission is to facilitate communication that is equitable and devoid of bias. Through conversational design, biases are eliminated, ensuring fair and inclusive interactions. A significant part of our strategy involves refining the conversational capabilities of our systems, striving for a natural, seamless exchange of speech that ensures equal treatment for all and eradicates discriminatory tendencies. As we navigate the future of work, Voice AI stands as a valuable tool, empowering enhanced communication, fostering seamless consumer conversations, and further elevating customer satisfaction.

To learn more about how Voice AI can help support your human resources and scale their collection efforts with call automation, schedule a call with one of our experts or use the chat tool below.

Solving Collection Agent Attrition and Scalability Issues for Auto Finance Companies

Posted on by Harshad Bajpai

The rapid growth of the automotive finance market—CAGR of 6.5% [2022-2028] and the likelihood of reaching USD 385 bn with the rapid growth of 42 Billion in market size, indicates the opportunity ahead. But growth needs to be supported by resources, and the skilled workforce is the most scarce.

For decades auto financers have struggled with the shortage of skilled human support executives. Although various automation solutions helped them move closer to automating most of their workflows, it was far from getting realized. 

With rapid advancements in voice technology by vertical Voice AI companies such as Skit.ai, we have reached a point of seamlessly automated customer conversations and significantly reduced the dependence on human agents. 

We have deep-dived into various aspects of how Skit.ai’s voicebot impacts the Top and Bottom Line. In this piece, we will explore how Skit.ai’s AI-powered Digital Collections Agent will solve one of the most significant scalability problems arising from the skilled labor shortage.

The Challenge of Scalability and Seasonality in Auto Finance 

Labor shortages and retaining a skilled workforce are big challenges in auto finance. Like other industries, the pandemic also affected automotive and finance companies, leading to employees’ reluctance to return to their jobs and re-evaluating their life priorities in the post-pandemic stage. As a result of the shortage of skilled human resources, the industry is riddled with the following:

  • Higher cost of recruiting, training, and retaining good performers
  • Inadequate debt portfolio coverage
  • Higher cost of collections or recovery
  • The limited scalability of the auto loan portfolio
  • Overworked human collectors or agents might lead to compliance breaches
  • The direct link between the auto loan recovery team and the number of accounts
  • Also, seasonality is a significant issue. For ex., during festive seasons, most collectors or agents are on holiday, so keeping the show running during that phase becomes highly challenging. 

In addition, collection agents face many challenges that make their job highly challenging. Here are a few core challenges the agents and companies face while trying to ensure the consumer gets back to the payment schedule:

Disengagement: High volume of dull, low-value, and repetitious calls make it challenging for the agents to be motivated and carry excitement while on the job. Simplistic calls about FAQs, wrong numbers, calls not picked up, call-back again requests, and more create zero value but consume a lot of time for agents. This monotony is at the core of their disengagement from work.

Recruitment and Training: Finding the right person for the job, training them regularly, and giving perks and incentives to retain their cost dearly to the auto financing companies. This cost and management issue can be thoroughly minimized with the deployment of Skit.ai’s voicebot.

Compliance Adherence: Debt, even secured ones like auto loans, come under a regulatory framework, and sometimes overworked agents tend to use coercion or not stick to regulatory restrictions, leading to litigations and non-compliance. 

Inadequate Portfolio Coverage: Agent team and bandwidth are limited, and they need to optimize the ones with the maximum probability to pay, and thus others get ignored. This is a loss because a fraction of others will also pay if followed. 

Handling Call Spikes: Seasonal fluctuations in calls, inbound or need for processing debt portfolio expeditely, needs seamless scalability else it is a missed opportunity that affects the performance of the auto financer. To have scalability, auto financers have to manage a bigger team of agents, which will be an enormous cost for them, hence an unfeasible alternative. 

How Skit.ai’s Digital Collection Agent Solves Skilled Agent Shortage 

At present, tools at the disposal of auto financers involve dated technology such as IVRs, and telephony that can not decouple incoming calls from human agents. At best, the tech solutions just alleviate the core problem to the slightest. 

Voice AI, the most cutting-edge voice technology, on the other hand, holds the most promise. There are various kinds of Voice AI solutions available in the market. Still, only voice-first Vertical Voice AI companies such as Skit.ai deliver voicebots that perform under the most testing of situations.

Here is how the Voicebot of Skit.ai empowers auto finance companies, solving 7 core challenges. You may also want to explore how Skit.ai’s Digital Collectors impact the top and bottom lines of auto finance companies. 

As promised, let’s deep dive into how our voicebot will help your company solve the problem of a shortage of skilled human agents forever:

  1. End-to-End Automation: Our voicebot is extensively trained in the domain of collections and is capable of answering over 70% of customer queries without escalating them to the human agent. These simplistic queries are mostly a waste of human agent time, and when the customer expresses the willingness to pay, the voicebot can enable on-call payment. 
  2. Potential for Much Higher Collections: Since the voicebot frees a significant amount of agent bandwidth, it can be used to process additional or new loan portfolios; thus, there is the possibility of a higher top line. In short, the same team of human agents can now deliver much higher collections revenue. 
  3. Reduction in Average Handling Time: The shorter the calls escalated to a human agent, the more productive they will be. Skit.ai’s Digital Collection Agent collects relevant information such as:
    1. Seeks information to verify the identity of the consumer
    2. Captures the disposition or the problem
    3. Solves a part of the question and then escalates the complex part to the human agent 
    4. Improves the accuracy of information divulged by the agent as it already furnishes factual information pulled from the CRM and other systems.
  4. Focus on Real Issues for Better Collections: The human agents can focus on the highest value and complex cases where they can use their expertise to troubleshoot and improve repayment rates.
  5. No Call Volume Spike for a Balanced Work-life:  Since Skit.ai’s AI-powered voicebot can answer any volume of calls, and since the voicebot entirely answers a majority of them, the actual increase in the workload is a fraction of the total increase. This improves the quality of work in real terms.
  6. Lower Concerns for Compliance and Litigation: For auto finance companies that deploy Skit.ai’s voicebot, the possibility of entering into litigation is very low because
    1.  For one, the voicebot does not go off script.
    2. The probability of a person filing a litigation being irked by a machine is very low. This is a big plus.
    3. Thus when the voicebot engages a majority of calls, the chances of litigation are negligible. 
  7. Better Customer Relations: Customer relations are built on touch and connection. The human agents can use the voicebots to schedule interaction touchpoints that foster a deeper relationship. The result of this is better collections due to customer satisfaction.

Voicebot for Limiting Dependence on Human Agents 

From the above list of unique benefits, it is clear that the voicebot, by answering a majority of calls and making outbound calls with end-to-end automation, reduces the dependence on human agents significantly. 

Today, auto finance companies can deploy Skit.ai’s state-of-the-art voicebot in less than 45 minutes and see their collection outcomes improve within weeks, not months. Many debt collectors have realized our solution’s indispensability and gained a competitive leg up. It is time to change!

To learn more about how Voice AI can help support your human resources and scale their collection efforts with call automation, schedule a call with one of our experts or use the chat tool below.

How Auto Finance Companies Can Improve Collections with Skit.ai’s Voicebot

Posted on by Harshad Bajpai

The economic volatility is affecting auto financers directly, and so do the inflation and other consumer behavioral trends, making it a genuinely complex space to be in.

Inflationary pressure is mounting significantly in the US economy, and the core inflation jumping to 6.6%, a 40-year high; on the other hand, the US economy is slowing down significantly, putting significant pressure on consumers to avoid delinquencies, which are now at historic highs.

Adding on top of these macroeconomic stresses for auto financers is the acute skilled labor shortage. The cumulative effect has made auto financers scout for automation solutions that can solve their challenges on all fronts.

Before Voice AI, no tech had such a capability that could automate collections and customer support calls without the need for agent intervention. Today, we are crossing the call automation rubicon with Voice AI solutions such as that offered by Skit.ai.

How Voice AI Can Empower an Auto Financing Company with Call Automation

A voicebot is a conversational Voice AI solution that can engage in meaningful conversation with the customers and understand what they are saying, having been trained extensively for particular business support issues. The design of the entire conversation is done, keeping in mind all the possible difficulties a customer can encounter and how best the collection process can be optimized.

So for every customer query, the voicebot has a ready answer as it pulls out relevant and accurate information from the client system and informs the customer, reducing the duration of the conversation remarkably.

Before we deep dive, here are a few salient points that must be borne in mind:

  • Our voicebots, also known as Digital Voice Agents, are trained extensively for specific business problems and hence are capable of engaging in intelligent conversations.
  • Our voicebot can handle all tier-I disputes, around 70% of customer queries. 
  • The remainder of calls, nearly 30%, are escalated to the human collector after the voicebot has established and verified the person’s identity and captured disposition. Thus saving human agent time and helping them engage in high-value tasks.
  • The cost of a voicebot is less than 1/5th of the human agent cost. Thus, overall pure cost savings are humongous.
  • The voicebot can place thousands of calls concurrently, thus reducing the dependence on human agents considerably.  
  • Our voicebot can be deployed within 45 minutes, making the results tangible and fast.

The impact of our voicebot on the top and bottom lines is well-documented and clear. 

Extrapolating results from Skit.ai’s clients with similar use cases, an auto finance company can realize impressive recovery rates at a fraction of the cost.

Before we explain the nuances of our tech, you can take a minute to watch our voicebot in action.

Voice AI for Inbound/Support Calls 

Inbound calls are gold mines because of these; a fraction of customers have called to pay and perhaps need assistance in processing their payment.

Present Status Quo or Before Voicebot Deployment: Unfortunately, most auto financers cannot answer a significant portion of incoming customer calls because of a lack of skilled human agents and due to the prohibitive costs. This a considerable opportunity miss.

After Skit.ai’s Voicebot: Every call gets answered, the intent gets captured, and willing consumers are facilitated to make on-call payments. Any query or dispute gets immediately noted or resolved. Also, details of any further follow-ups are recorded, and calls are scheduled.

Voice AI’s Impact:

All the clients of Skit.ai experienced the following:

  • Better collections as willing consumers were facilitated with payment options
  • Better disposition and intent capture 
  • Improvements in their CSAT scores
  • Better customer experience as financiers can listen and record every customer query.

Voice AI for Outbound Calls 

The capability to dial prompt and perfectly timed calls to reach out to overdue and delinquent accounts is perhaps the most significant capability an auto financer can have. The reason is that almost all auto financers with diverse portfolios have faced the problem of limited scalability and portfolio penetration.

The search for automation has always been, in essence, to ease the problem of limiting the scalability of dialing outbound or consumer reach-out calls. Outbound IVRs and other telephony solutions have eased the problem in their limited way. But only with Voice AI do auto financers experience call automation or intelligent automation of consumer calls.

Present Status Quo or Before Voicebot Deployment:

At present, auto finance has a limited number of agents that can place a call for collections. The process begins with an SMS reminder for payment, followed up in due course of time with a call made by an agent, and then depending upon the significance of the account, the subsequent follow-ups. Agent attrition and compliance breach always have auto financers wary of pushing things.

The diversity of auto loans in the portfolio increases the number of calls that need to be made. This leaves a significant part of the debt portfolio unattended.

After Skit.ai Voicebot:

Before you read further, listen to our voicebot in action and how easily it can help consumers pay.

Our voicebot addresses one of the most significant pain points of auto financers—scalability. We have empowered collectors to dial millions of calls within a week if they so desire. This means that reminders for every overdue or delinquent account will be reached out by our voicebot at the right time, at the desired frequency, and even help them make a payment or reschedule their payments if the need arises.

This means that simplistic calls such as reminders and notification calls can be done by the voicebot, which can even capture intent and help agents prioritize accounts.

This seamless scalability in outbound calls empowers collectors tremendously and can take their recovery rates and portfolio coverage intensity to new heights.

Voice AI’s Impact:

  • Repayment Rate at par with an average human agent
  • Better overall collections at a fraction of the cost
  • Human-Agent Bandwidth Optimization
  • Cost of Collections slashed to less than 1/5th 
  • Portfolio Coverage of 100%
  • Seamless Scalability that leaves scope to increase portfolio with the same collections team
  • Better compliance as the voicebot sticks to the script 

Summarizing the Overall Transformation

The distinct advantages of a Voice AI solution such as that of Skit.ai are conspicuous and indubitable, as many collectors have realized tangible benefits quickly. The impact of this technology is truly transformative and has begun to disrupt many businesses function, such as collection and customer support. 

Though our solution can be incorporated in less than 45 minutes, the competitive leg up for early adopters is as significant and can impact long-term success.

If you found our technology relevant and exciting, feel free to schedule a meeting with one of our experts using the chat tool below.

4 Ways AI Voicebots Are Transforming Auto Finance Collections

Posted on by Simone Somekh

There have been a total of 13.7 million car sales in the U.S. in 2022, according to an IBISWorld estimate. Car sales have been declining since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic due to many factors, including the growing prevalence of remote work, supply chain issues, and a looming recession.

As a consequence, interest rates have been rising significantly, hitting over 6.0% and negatively affecting the number of car sales. With higher prices, bigger loans, and higher interest rates, comes an increase in delinquencies. It has become an issue for many auto finance companies to keep up with the high number of delinquent borrowers.

In this article, we’ll discuss how Voice AI (the technology behind a voicebot) can transform auto loan collections in different ways.

What Is Voice AI?

Also referred to as a voicebot, Voice AI is a technology that enables companies to automate calls with customers from start to finish without requiring the involvement of a human agent.

AI-powered Digital Voice Agents are capable of handling intelligent conversations with users. The technology understands what the user needs and helps them effectively resolve the issue in just a few minutes. Voice AI should not be confused with Outbound IVR (Interactive Voice Response), a dated technology that consumers tend to dislike.

Auto finance companies that perform collection calls are now turning to Voice AI to automate many of the repetitive, tedious calls they used to perform manually and allow their live agents to focus on more complex and revenue-generating tasks. The Digital Voice Agent engages with the borrower, verifies their identity, and collects the payment on-call, covering up to 70% of the company’s outbound call volume.

To better understand what Voice AI is, think about Siri or Alexa, but for collections. However, there is one difference. While voice assistants like Alexa can only handle one or two conversation turns, a solution like Skit.ai’s Digital Voice Agent is designed to address issues that often require several conversation turns. Just like humans need to gather the context before solving a problem, a Digital Voice Agent might ask multiple questions before proposing a resolution.

What Are the Most Common Uses of Voice AI in Auto Finance Collections?

Voice AI is just one of the many artificial intelligence trends that are taking the auto industry by storm. Its ability to automate collection calls and other common types of outbound calls to borrowers is particularly appealing to auto finance leaders looking for ways to cut contact center costs and maximize profits.

Let’s dive deeper into the four most common uses of Voice AI (the technology behind Skit.ai’s Digital Voice Agent) in auto finance collections:

Welcome calls: Lenders and auto finance companies typically deliver an initial “welcome call” to borrowers to let them know that they are servicing the loan or in charge of collecting payments. While these calls are important, they are not revenue-generating and utilize the precious time of the company’s live agents.

Skit.ai’s voicebot solution can easily initiate an outbound call to borrowers to deliver the message and then answer some of the customers’ most common questions.

Payment reminders: Auto finance agents typically spend most of their time calling borrowers to remind them of payments that are due soon or payments that are already overdue. Reaching borrowers is not always a straightforward process! Agents have to establish right-party contact, explain who they are, and remind the borrower about the payment. When the volume of loans increases, it can be challenging for managers to scale the contact center to fit the need of the moment.

Skit.ai’s Voice AI solution can offload up to 70% of the calls from live agents, handling payment reminders automatically. Skit.ai’s clients have even reported that some borrowers prefer to interact with a voicebot rather than a human agent, as it can be embarrassing for them to discuss pending payments and the risk of going delinquent. The voicebot can easily establish right-party contact, remind the borrowers of the due balance, and offer different ways to pay it off.

On-call collections: The end goal for any collector is to recover the payment from the borrower; if the borrower is willing to make the payment on-call, even better. While this part of the process is directly revenue-generating, it still takes time and resources to complete.

Skit.ai’s Digital Voice Agent has the capability to collect the payment during the call, making the process significantly cheaper for the company servicing the loan. The collection is processed through a payment gateway of the company’s choice.

Autopay or ACH sign-up: Many auto finance companies servicing loans initiate outbound calls to borrowers to offer them to sign up for autopay. With autopay or ACH, borrowers can automate payments from their credit card or bank account so that they can be processed on a regular basis.

Skit.ai’s Digital Voice Agent can easily call borrowers, explain how autopay works, and offer them to sign up on call. This is an ideal scenario for auto finance companies, as it ensures a regular cash flow.

How Do Auto Finance Collections Work?

Now that we know what Voice AI is and the main use cases in auto finance, let’s go over the main steps of a standard collection call handled by one of Skit.ai’s Digital Voice Agents.

The voicebot follows these steps:

  1. Triggers the outbound call based on pre-determined criteria
  2. Establishes contact with the borrower (RPC) and reminds them about the payment
  3. Collects propensity data and reasons for potential non-payment
  4. If the customer is interested in making the payment right away, the Digital Voice Agent guides them through the process via a payment gateway
  5. Persuades the customer to pay at the earliest, or offers alternate payment plans
  6. Feeds data to the CMS (collection management software) and provides analytics for further action
  7. Performs auto-callback on request, auto-retries, hot transfer to agent

Are you interested in learning more about how Skit.ai’s Augmented Voice Intelligence platform works and how your auto finance company can adopt it? Schedule a call with one of our experts using the chat tool below!

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