Categories
chatbots conversational UX / AI

Chatbots for Debt Collection

There is a growing expectation that chatbots can be used for debt collection. The obvious low hanging fruit is for a chatbot to:

  • Answer questions about the debt
  • Qualify a customer through a set of gated interviews:
    • General questions
    • KYC
    • Debt specific questions
    • Specialist questions eg payment plans
    • Process payments (link to Apple or Google Pay on mobile)
    • Organise phone call
    • Gather feedback
  • Provide the qualified information to the customer
  • Provide a status of outstanding balance
  • Confirm next steps

The benefits are:

  • Better governance and compliance
  • More comprehensive audit trail
  • Increase objectivity and consistency
  • Ensure strong equality
  • Reduce cost
  • Scalable parallel interviews
  • Offer 24/7 service when it suits the customer
  • Retain knowledge, especially for specialist subjects
  • Better customer experience
  • Reduce complaints and litigation

Interestingly, the knowledge assets produced for the ecosystem of chatbots involved could become a game changer in the in the debt collection industry, and for Call Centre Operations teams internal fulfilment processes.

The conversational UX could be extended to include advice for customers such as how to manage a budget, find work…

Categories
blockchain crypto future payments security startup trading venture capital

The seven deadly paradoxes of cryptoassets

On one hand cryptoassets are losing value but there are still fat margins to be made by providing trading infrastructure (eg exchanges) for people looking for a bit of fun.

The author of this article is taking a longer term view about crypto: Will people in 2030 buy goods, get mortgages or hold their pension pots in bitcoin, ethereum or ripple rather than central bank issued currencies? I doubt it.  Existing private cryptocurrencies do not seriously threaten traditional monies because they are afflicted by multiple internal contradictions. They are hard to scale, are expensive to store, cumbersome to maintain, tricky for holders to liquidate, almost worthless in theory, and boxed in by their anonymity. And if newer cryptocurrencies ever emerge to solve these problems, that’s additional downside news for the value of existing ones.