Entering a New Era of Debt Collections with Conversational Voice AI

Debt collection companies have been automating various parts of their operations, much like companies in other industries. However, their core problem – the inability to automate intelligent spoken conversations – has impacted their ability to solve their core challenges. 

Connecting with consumers to recover payments is at the core of what a debt collection company does. Conversational Voice AI, with its capability to automate collection calls, solves all significant challenges and ushers in a new era of debt collections.

How is Voice AI changing debt collections forever?

  • 100% Account Penetration: Digital Collection Agents can dial millions of calls within a few days, covering an agency’s entire debt portfolio. This has never been possible until now, as over a third of the files an agency has remain untouched. 
  • Less Dependence on Human Agents: It is hard to find a skilled collector, and having a consistent team that can scale up when needed has been extremely challenging. But instant scalability with Digital Collection Agents, the dependence on human collectors goes down substantially. The end-to-end automation of many calls means that human agents are no longer required to do those calls. So a collector can manage a larger portfolio with a smaller or the same team of agents. 
  • Augmenting Agent Productivity: Since Digital Collection Agents can complete voluminous and low-value tasks, the outcomes help human agents optimize the accounts they focus on and the problems they want to solve. This was impossible, as human agents were busy identifying RPC and WPCs, dispute calls, and others. 
  • File Segmentation for Better Recovery: For the first time, collectors can now see the entire picture of their portfolio. They can see the set of Right Part Contacts (RPCs), the propensity to pay, and other vital data. This power of segmentation is helping them optimize their collection strategy and improve collections. 
  • Remarkably Lower Cost Structure: The Digital Collection Agents can dial over 80% cheaper calls while also being scalable. This has never been possible before.

Further Read: Top and Bottom Lines Impact of Skit.ai’s Solution for Debt Collection Agencies?

Voice AI comes with other remarkable benefits; here are a few: 

  • Lower Compliance and Legal Risk: In addition to its many benefits, Voice AI also has the potential to improve compliance and reduce the risk of legal issues. Debt collection can be complex and regulated, and collectors must follow strict compliance guidelines. With Voice AI, these guidelines can be built into the technology to ensure that digital collection agents always follow best practices. This can help to reduce the risk of legal issues and protect both the debt collection agency and the customer.
  • Better Decision-Making with Data Analytics: Voice AI also can analyze customer data and make informed decisions on the best course of action. For example, Voice AI can use data on a customer’s payment history, income, and expenses to determine the best payment plan for them. This data-driven approach can lead to more efficient and practical debt resolution outcomes and a better customer experience.
  • Unprecedented Automation: One of the main benefits of Voice AI in debt collections is that it automates much of the manual work involved in the process. Debt collectors can use Voice AI to automate tasks such as calling customers, sending reminders, and recording customer interactions. This saves time and allows collectors to focus on more complex tasks, such as negotiating payment plans and resolving disputes.

How to choose the best Conversational Voice AI solution provider?

The most important thing to remember about a Voice AI solution is that it either works and satisfies the consumer, leading to positive outcomes and recovery, or it will lead to consumer frustration and significantly adverse outcomes. Hence the choice of vendor is highly vital. Here are a few things to consider: 

  • Proven Track Record: To ensure a successful implementation, working with a Voice AI provider with a proven track record in the industry and who can provide a comprehensive and integrated solution is essential.
  • Ease of Integration: Another challenge when implementing Voice AI in debt collections is ensuring the technology is integrated with existing systems and processes. The provider’s capability to integrate with existing systems is one of the significant factors that must be considered while selecting the Voice AI vendor. 
  • Ease of Deployment: One of the critical challenges in implementing Voice AI in debt collections is ensuring that the technology is user-friendly for debt collectors and customers. Make sure that your vendor’s solution is easy to use and deploy. 
  • Speed of Deployment: The solution must be ready. No promise of building a solution in a few months should be considered because no working product is ready. Select a vendor ready to go live with essential inputs from your end.
  • Positive Business Outcomes: Look at the results they have been about to achieve in the recent past. Match it with the outcomes you want to achieve, and only then will deploying that Voice AI solution be successful. 

Make the Right Choice 

The technology is remarkable and has proved its worth. The only thing left for debt collectors is the selection of the right Voice AI vendor. Select the right vendor, and it will help you gain a competitive edge and show your tangible positive outcomes in a matter of weeks. 

Voice AI technology is about to change debt collections forever; don’t miss out! 

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

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.