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…