5 Ways IVR Can Increase Collections in the New Year

Chris Bohlin

Another year has come and gone and we still find ourselves as challenged as ever to be more efficient, lower costs and collect more.  For those of you out there who made the requisite New Year’s resolution to ‘try something new’ or ‘replace something old’ maybe it’s time to consider evaluating your current IVR solutions? Voice is still the #1 preferred channel of interaction for the contact center.

We all understand the value of improving collections and more and more frequently are using numerous channels (voice, text, email, and web) to reach consumers.  All of these channels attempt to contact the right consumer, at the right time, via the right channel. But with all these new channels, we need to be reminded that Interactive Voice Response (IVR) increases efficiencies, facilitates dynamic interaction with the caller, and customers to resolve inquiries quickly and easily. Here are five ways that IVR increases payments.

1. Expand Payment and Billing Options: Increase payments by incorporating a profitable inbound strategy into all outbound communications like dunning letters, voicemail, email, SMS messages.

2. Improve Customer Satisfaction: By linking the account number to the customer phone number, the caller no longer is required to enter in their full account number to make a payment. Also, provide customers the ability to make payments on their accounts without needing to interact with an agent thus remaining anonymous and avoiding the embarrassment of the collections process.

3. Increase Agent Productivity: Use agent time effectively by driving lower balance accounts to a self-pay options so agents can focus on the higher balance, more difficult to collect debts.

4. Lower Transaction Costs: Gain the flexibility and scalability necessary to handle and route repetitive calls efficiently, such as calls to check a balance or amount owed.

5. Preference-based Service Delivery: Enable customers to complete transactions in a time and place that is convenient to them, empowering them to resolve their own inquiries quickly and easily.

Learn more how to optimize your IVR and take your inbound collections strategy from none to dun in our webinar, Inbound IVR for Collections: From None to Dun, on Thursday, January 9th.