In collections, it’s easy to assume that payment is the most important marker for success.

However, at Sigma Connected, we tend to think a little more long-term than that. Although there are endless contact centre KPIs that businesses can use to audit collections, we believe that the most important are those that indicate the quality of your customer relationships.

Why? Because building strong customer relationships is the key to unlocking some of the biggest challenges of collections, including:

• Non-responsive customers
• Financial hardship
• Disputes
• Cost of debt recovery

At the heart of this relationship-focused approach is assessing each customer’s ability to pay, which is a fundamental aspect of responsible and ethical debt collection in the UK. This ensures that repayment plans are tailored to the individual circumstances, preventing financial harm while promoting sustainable outcomes. By considering income, essential living costs, and vulnerability factors, you strike a balance between recovering debt and supporting customer well-being. This approach not only complies with regulatory expectations from Ofgem and the FCA, but also fosters trust, reduces the likelihood of repeat arrears, and enhances long-term customer engagement.

It’s one of the reasons why we’re such strong advocates of the human touch in the collections process. But here’s the challenge: how do you measure collection performance when so much of it depends on relationship-focused factors like ability to pay and customer well-being?

In this guide, we’ve explored exactly that. With an in-depth look at the best debt collection metrics to incorporate into your collections strategy, their main challenges, and what best practice looks like.

So you can improve not just your collections rate, but your regulatory compliance, your customer retention, and your overall reputation as a brand.

Because remember: someone who owes money today, could be a loyal brand advocate tomorrow. All it takes is the human touch.

Contents

PART 1: Making contact

• Right party contact rate
• Call abandonment rate
• First contact resolution

PART 2: Internal efficiency

• Average handle time
• Agent utilisation / occupancy rate
• Compliance rate

PART 3: Securing Payment

• Promise to pay & ‘stickability’ rate
• Debt secured as a % of opportunity
• Payment collected as a % of opportunity
  

PART 4: Futureproofing your process

• Quality assurance
• Customer satisfaction

Part 1: Making contact

RIGHT PARTY CONTACT (RPC) RATE

What is it?

For our first KPI, we’re starting right at the beginning of the customer journey and measuring the percentage of outbound comms that successfully reach the intended customer.

How do we measure it?

RPC Rate = (Number of calls where contact is made successfully ÷ Total connected calls ) x 100

Why is it important?

It might sound basic, but contact alone isn’t going to achieve your goals, unless the decision-maker picks up. If it’s someone else or an answering machine, the best you can hope for is a call back at a later time.

That’s why if you’re failing on RPC Rate, you’ll fail at all your KPIs  – so it’s an essential box to tick at the start of the collections optimisation process.

Get your RCP Rate right, and you’ll be boosting efficiency, reducing wasted resources, and maximising your chance of understanding your customers’ circumstances – which hopefully leads to securing payments.

Key performance obstacles:

• Wrong number / unrecognised number / outdated contact details
• Number is unavailable or disconnected
• Customer is avoiding contact from collectors
• Regulatory restrictions on contact attempts
• Older debt – this often correlates with low RPC rates

What does best practice look like?

Maximising your RPC rate is initially about getting your data ducks in a row. Making sure customer information is accurately collected and regularly updated is the first step.

Next, it’s useful to segment your customer base by things like demographics, age, income and customer behaviour, and then aligning that with their preferred contact method and contact times. You can then use an omnichannel collections strategy to talk to customers on their terms: whether that’s via phone, email, SMS, or other digital platforms.

The next step is about optimising the customer experience. You can prepare for this with consistent and effective call scripting or guidance for other types of interaction. Then, once you’ve made contact, you should clearly identify the purpose of the conversation and confirm that you’re speaking to the right customer. This will help to avoid confusion and build trust.

Finally, record your findings, analyse customer behaviour, and adjust your contact strategies accordingly. At Sigma Connected, we try multiple initiatives for each client, to see which one achieves the best unique RPC rate, and at what stage diminishing returns set in. Running champion challenger strategies in this way means you can keep building and tweaking until you find the optimum approach.

Remember: the best strategies never stand still.

How type of debt affects RPC rates

Customers may be more likely to answer calls about debts with lower balances, while calls about high-balance debts are ignored, as they’re seen as ‘impossible’ to pay off.

Customers also tend to prioritise their debts based on the consequences of non-payment, such as interest, stress, impact on their credit rating, or other inconveniences.

CALL ABANDONMENT RATE

What is it?

Successful collections isn’t just about outbound calls – your KPIs need to cover your inbound communications as well. Call Abandonment Rate is a metric that covers both.

For inbound calls, the Call Abandonment Rate is the percentage of calls that are disconnected by the customer before they’ve reached an agent. This is usually due to lack of agent availability, poor phone signal or long wait times.

For outbound calls, an abandoned call might be caused by things like wrong numbers, missed calls, and going straight to voicemail – as well as scenarios where the customer is automatically dialled, but there isn’t an agent ready to talk to them when they pick up. In this scenario, an automated ‘please call us back’ message might be played – but it still counts as an abandoned call.

How do we measure it?

Outbound = Abandoned calls ÷ (Total calls made + abandoned calls) x 100

Inbound = (Abandoned calls ÷ Total calls answered) x 100

Why is it important?

Inbound calls are when customers contact you – either on their own terms or in relation to reminders you have sent them – and at a time that suits them. If wait times and frustrating systems hamper their efforts, there’s a risk of them being less co-operative next time you contact them about settling their debts.

If the customer experience is better – and therefore fewer calls are abandoned – the likelihood of securing repayment will be better too.

Key performance obstacles (for inbound calls):

• Long wait times due to lack of resource
• Inadequate technology, such as ineffective IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
• Excessive transferring between departments
• Understaffing during peak hours

What does best practice look like?

It varies by industry, but the ideal Call Abandonment Rate is typically below 5%. Improve your customer experience, and you’ll improve your Call Abandonment Rate. So take a look at the key performance obstacles above, and think about how they could be overcome.

First, monitor your current wait times and establish when call abandonment spikes. This will help you to set a target for maximum call wait time.

Next, call your contact number and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Critically appraise your IVR and menu options, and make changes that will streamline the process and help connect callers to the right agent, faster.

Thirdly, work out what your peak call times are, and optimise your staffing accordingly. You could also provide other support channels and self-service resources to take the pressure off your call centre – just make sure you’re signposting them effectively.

FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION (FCR)

What is it?

The dream scenario. First Contact Resolution measures the percentage of cases that can be closed after the first contact. No quibbles. No need for follow-ups. Just instant success.

This is slightly different to First Call Resolution – which only takes phone communication into account.

How do we measure it?

FCR Rate = (Number of cases resolved during the first contact ÷ Total cases) x 100

Why is it important?

It’s ideal for you – and ideal for customers too. You get your payment secured, or at least learn more about the customer’s circumstances. They avoid the stress and inconvenience of being chased. And agents are free to handle more cases.

It’s also worth noting that 60% of consumers purchase from a brand solely based on the service they expect to receive. If they’ve experienced positive service where issues are resolved quickly, they’re more likely to purchase from your brand again in the future.

Key performance obstacles:

• Inadequate customer information
• Poor training
• Agents lack skills or autonomy to make final decisions around collection resolution
• Complex issues that require multiple interactions
• Pressure to prioritise speed of resolution over quality

What does best practice look like?

‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.’

To maximise First Contact Resolution rate, bear the old proverb in mind, and give people the tools they need to take the initiative. For customers, that means self-service tools that they can use to solve problems and make payments on their own.

For agents, those tools look more like easily-accessible, accurate customer data, scripts or guides, and processes that make it easy to address customer queries and objections in a single interaction.

You can also use call quality monitoring and targeted coaching to refine your strategy and team skillsets where appropriate. The goal is to minimise the need for escalations or call-backs, and give your team the confidence to make decisions on the spot.

PART 2: INTERNAL EFFICIENCY

AVERAGE HANDLE TIME (AHT)

What is it?

Average Handle Time, or AHT, refers to how long it takes to complete a single customer service interaction.

Typically, outbound AHT includes everything from dialling a customer’s number and waiting for them to pick up, to any post-call tasks that need to be completed to resolve the call, such as note-taking.

At Sigma Connected, we break down the key components of AHT as follows:

• Talk: Time spent talking on the phone to the customer.
• Hold: Time spent with the customer on hold, or waiting for the call to connect with a customer.
• Wrap: Time spent on post-call follow-up activities (such as updating the CRM).
• Wait: Any time where agents are available for action – i.e. not on the phone, dialling out, or completing follow-up tasks.

How do we measure it?

Outbound AHT = (Duration of talk time + hold time + wrap time + wait time) ÷ Total number of calls.
Inbound AHT = (Duration of talk time + hold time + wrap time) ÷ Total number of calls.

Outbound AHTs tend to be much lower than inbound AHTs because lots of calls go through to answering machines – and leaving a message takes much less time than a full conversation.

Why is it important?

For Sigma Connected, AHT is how we manage resource. If a client says they need us to make 1000 calls in a month, and the expected AHT is 500 seconds, this helps us to ensure we’ve got the right number of people working on the account. If AHT were higher than expected, our staff requirements would increase too.

For other businesses, Average Handle Time can be the ‘canary in the coal mine’ KPI – if it’s too high, or too low, it’s an early alert that there’s something going wrong with your systems.

It could mean that your product or service mechanisms are too complex. That your self-service tools and support resources aren’t up to scratch. That there’s a bottleneck in your customer journey. Or simply that your agents aren’t as efficient or as well-trained as they could be.

Whichever it is, a too high or too low AHT significantly impacts the customer experience and your brand’s reputation.

Short AHTs in particular can indicate that customers aren’t getting the correct outcome, resulting in repeat contact – so it’s important to identify the cause and get it sorted, fast.

Key performance obstacles

• Fluctuations in call volumes
• High variations in case complexity
• Prioritising speed over quality
• Excessive post-call admin affecting agent productivity

What does best practice look like?

The best way to handle Average Handle Time is with information. Keep customers informed with high-quality self-service resources. Keep agents informed with high-quality training and coaching, both during staff onboarding and on an ongoing basis. You could also try an internal chat system between agents, which could eliminate the necessity of transferring customers.

Keep yourself informed by monitoring, recording and analysing calls, and incorporate your learnings into strong, efficient guides that cover every scenario. With the right information at everyone’s fingertips, you should be able to cut down your Average Handle Time.

However, a word of caution: try to avoid sacrificing quality for speed. You might find that doing so negatively impacts your other KPIs, as well as your collection rate.

AHT averages by industry

• Utilities: 4-6 minutes
• Consumer/Professional services: 3 minutes, 36 seconds
• Financial services: 4 minutes, 5 seconds
• Government & Public Sector: 4 minutes, 12 seconds
• Healthcare: 3 minutes, 28 seconds
• Retail, Ecommerce, and Consumer Goods: 3 minutes, 29 seconds
• Telecommunications: 2 minutes, 36 seconds
• Transportation and Logistics: 4 minutes, 8 seconds
• Other: 1 minute, 21 seconds

AGENT UTILISATION RATE

What is it?

Your Agent Utilisation Rate is a measure of agent productivity. Some businesses (including Sigma Connected) call this ‘Agent Occupancy’ – for us, the terms can be used interchangeably.

Agent Utilisation and Agent Occupancy consider things like logging notes, updating records, and other admin jobs – as well as team meetings, training, and of course time spent talking to customers.

How do we measure it?

Agent Utilisation / Occupancy Rate = (Talk + Hold + Wrap Time) ÷ (Talk + Hold + Wrap + Wait Time) x 100

At Sigma Connected, we break down the key components of Agent Occupancy as follows:

• Talk: Time spent talking on the phone to the customer.
• Hold: Time spent with the customer on hold, or waiting for the call to connect with a customer.
• Wrap: Time spent on post-call follow-up activities (such as updating the CRM).
• Wait: Any time where agents are available for action – i.e. not on the phone, dialling out, or completing follow-up tasks.

Why is it important?

Agent Utilisation / Occupancy is a great way of assessing the overall efficiency and performance of your workforce. It’s an important reference point for workload management, and is essential for making informed staffing and training decisions – especially in comparison to less nuanced metrics like collections rates per agent.

It’s also an important indicator of staff wellbeing, as if your Agent Utilisation / Occupancy rate is too high, your team could be close to burnout. As well as avoiding attrition and additional recruitment costs, having a more balanced approach to Agent Utilisation is great for customers too – as happy people will achieve better outcomes for them.

Key performance obstacles

• Fluctuations in call volumes
• Overstaffing and understaffing
• Inefficient software
• Agent burnout

What does best practice look like?

This will vary according to sector, business size, and your agents’ skills and work hours, so be sure to set realistic utilisation goals for your team.

At Sigma Connected, our target Agent Occupancy Rate is 85% – which is one of the things that makes us different. On one hand, our agents are very efficient for clients – but on the other, we’re realistic about our people needing time to breathe.

Always being back-to-back on calls is stressful and leads to a high churn rate of staff – which costs more than just money. Instead, we work proactively to hold onto staff that are well-trained and highly engaged, to boost the quality of our campaigns.

So other than outsourcing to Sigma Connected, how can you maximise your Utilisation Rate? Well, it’s important to first identify what might be holding it back, by tracking real-time agent activity and looking out for any patterns or bottlenecks.

You can then start introducing adaptive scheduling strategies, offering additional training for staff, and using AI to automate more routine tasks like note-taking and ticketing for added efficiency.

Keep checking in with your staff too, and be open to feedback. Customers don’t appreciate robotic customer service – and nor will your employees. So prioritise wellbeing as a cornerstone of your strategy.

COMPLIANCE RATE

What is it?

Compliance Rate is the percentage of customer interactions that meet regulatory standards.

However, you can also use it to measure your performance against your own internal standards and policies, or less formal industry codes of practice.

How do we measure it?

Compliance Rate = (Number of Compliant Calls ÷ Total Number of Calls ) x 100

Why is it important?

Failing to be compliant can come back to bite you in all sorts of ways. From regulatory fines to negative PR, your business’s entire future could be affected by whether or not you prioritise compliance as a KPI.

However, getting everyone to adhere to industry standards isn’t always an easy task.

Key performance obstacles

• Changing regulatory standards
• Complexity of achieving compliance
• Human error
• Maintaining consistency across all teams and individuals

What does best practice look like?

Communication is a key element of getting your Compliance Rate right. From the moment they join the business, all staff should be made aware of what’s required to meet industry and internal regulations. This is especially important in debt collections, as industries like financial services and energy are extremely tightly regulated.

For existing staff, continuous training and ‘refresher sessions’ are essential. Define documented, compliant processes for agents to follow, and when regulations change, send regular reminders – one whole-organisation email isn’t enough. You should also track who has read and acknowledged the updates, and follow up where required.

The same applies if you outsource your call centre operations. Choose an experienced provider that takes compliance seriously, and maintain robust communications at all times.

Finally, conduct regular compliance audits, and consider investing in software that can complete real-time compliance checks for you. This will help you ensure that nothing is slipping through the net – and help you monitor when it’s time for another training session.

PART 3: SECURING PAYMENT

PROMISE TO PAY & ‘STICKABILITY’ RATE

What is it?

Promise to Pay Rate (PTP) measures the percentage of calls where customers verbally agree to making a payment. ‘Stickability’ Rate measures how many of these verbal agreements are upheld. The two measures often go hand-in-hand.

How do we measure it?

PTP Rate = (Number of calls where a payment commitment is made ÷ Total calls ) x 100

Stickability Rate = (Number of promises kept ÷ Number of promises made) x 100

Why is it important?

PTP is essentially a 3-in-1 KPI: it tells you that you’ve successfully reached the customer, that agents are having positive interactions with customers, and it gives you some indication of the customer’s emotional and financial situation.

If your PTP and Stickability Rates are high, this tells you that your collections strategy is working well, and you’ve successfully laid the groundwork for getting those payments over the line.

Key performance obstacles

• Inconsistent tracking – will Promises to Pay be recorded if the customer proceeds to make a payment on the call?
• Difficulty of verifying genuine intent to pay
• Customers may promise to pay and then fail to fulfil commitments later

What does best practice look like?

To increase your Promise to Pay Rate, it’s important to offer your agents everything they need to secure a verbal commitment from customers. That means centralising access to customer information, training agents on negotiation techniques, and sharing any live insights across the organisation.

These might include risk profiles for delinquent accounts, scripts that have been adapted for various scenarios, and predictions of when the best contact times might be. You can then track Stickability or payment follow-through rates to see what’s working, and what’s not – and feed your findings back into the system.

PAYMENT SECURED AS A % OF OPPORTUNITY

What is it?

Payment Secured as a Percentage of Opportunity refers to the proportion of total available debt that the customer has committed to repaying – through things like promises to pay and agreed payment plans. It tells you if the customer intends to pay, but not if any money has been received.

How do we measure it?

Payment Secured as a Percentage of Opportunity = ( Total amount secured ÷ Total debt due ) x 100

So if the customer owes £1,000 and you’ve secured repayment agreements worth £600, the payment secured = 60% of opportunity.

Why is it important?

How good is your team at helping customers to commit to repayments? Work out your Payment Secured as a Percentage of Opportunity, and you’ll have your answer. On a broader scale, this metric also tells you how efficient and effective your collections strategy is overall.

Key performance obstacles

• Ineffective collections strategies
• Lack of customer information / poor tracking of comms
• Strict regulations on collection practices
• Customer behaviour – e.g. stalling or avoiding making commitments
• Customer disputes and billing errors
• Macroeconomic forces – e.g. recessions impacting ability to commit to pay
• Debt history – older debts are harder to recover
• Not all debts are collectable
• The list is endless!

What does best practice look like?

As with most of our KPIs, the first port of call is to keep up-to-date, relevant information about all your customers. This information enables you to take a flexible approach, and tailor your strategy to different customer segments. 

You might do this by calling at a preferred time of day, or using an omnichannel approach to contact the customer (and follow up) in the ways that suit them best.

Once you’ve made contact, you can continue this tailored approach by offering flexible payment plans and methods. It’s also helpful to prioritise early-stage collections, as recent debts are typically easier to recover than larger, longstanding sums.

Finally, train your team to be flexible too, with helpful guides and training sessions that cover multiple scenarios. You could also consider outsourcing to a specialist who can handle all these elements in a compliant, consistent way, so you don’t have to.

Remember: while payment secured is an early indicator of successful collection, there’s still a risk that the customer might not pay when agreed. So your follow-up strategy needs to be watertight.

PAYMENT COLLECTED AS A % OF OPPORTUNITY

What is it?

Payment Collected as a Percentage of Opportunity is the follow up KPI to Payment Secured as a Percentage of Opportunity. It tells you the proportion of total available debt that has been paid back.

What’s the difference between ‘Payment Secured’ and ‘Payment Collected’?

Put simply, Payment Secured is about promises, while Payment Collected is about proof.

How do we measure it?

Payment Collected as a Percentage of Opportunity = ( Total amount collected ÷ Total debt due ) x 100

So if the customer owed £1,000 and £600 has been received, the payment collected = 60% of opportunity.

Why is it important?

This metric is the bread and butter of a collections department. It tells you how efficient and effective your collection strategy is, and more widely, it’s an important indicator of the financial health of your organisation.

Key performance obstacles

• Ineffective collections strategies
• Lack of customer information / poor tracking of comms
• Strict regulations on collection practices
• Customer behaviour – e.g. stalling or avoiding making payments
• Customer disputes and billing errors
• Macroeconomic forces – e.g. recessions impacting ability to pay
• Debt history – older debts are harder to recover
• Not all debts are collectable
• The list is endless!

What does best practice look like?

Best practice for ‘Payment Collected’ looks very similar to best practice for a high ‘Payment Secured’ rate – with extra emphasis on making those final payments as frictionless as possible.

You can do this through automation – scheduling tailored reminders and contact sequences around promised payment dates – then if the payment date is missed, the human touch is essential for chasing in a way that doesn’t undermine trust.

If you’re outsourcing collections to a third party, it’s essential to choose the right provider. One that specialises in collections, takes on your KPIs as their own, and works in true partnership with you to successfully recover debt.

The next step is to communicate. Sharing information and live insights between your organisation and your external collections department will help them to be as efficient and effective as possible, and maximise your Payment Collected as a Percentage of Opportunity.

PART 4: FUTUREPROOFING YOUR PROCESS

QUALITY ASSURANCE

What is it?

Broadly speaking, Quality Assurance (QA) is used to measure agent quality during customer interactions. This includes both written and verbal comms.

The term can incorporate all sorts of performance indicators, from soft skills and tone of voice to cash collected and regulatory compliance – and what QA covers can vary from business to business.

However, in most cases we see, the majority of a QA scorecard is taken up by compliance, as it’s a great mechanism for checking every agent is adhering to essential processes and regulations.

How do we measure it?

QA is typically based on a scorecard. A percentage score is given, depending on how closely the QA framework has been adhered to.

At Sigma Connected, most of our clients (and campaigns) have their own scorecards and rating scales. What’s included can vary significantly, depending on the client’s priorities, but typically agents must achieve 80-95% adherence to pass QA. The majority of scorecards also include auto-fail criteria, so if an agent forgets to confirm DPA (for instance), their overall score is zero.

Why is it important?

QA scores are useful on both an individual and a group scale. As tone of voice (written and verbal) and customer service approaches are quite subjective topics, QA makes them more objective and quantifiable.

QA scores also make it easier to identify areas for improvement and communicate them to staff. If the same areas for improvement crop up again and again across the team, it may be that there’s an issue with your staff training strategy – which you can then rectify.

More generally, QA scores provide assurance of consistent service quality across your organisation, and facilitate continuous, measurable growth on both an individual and company-wide level.

Key performance obstacles

• Understanding what ‘quality’ looks like for all parties
• Changing / updating quality metrics too often
• Operational KPIs not being aligned to QA frameworks
• Limited resources and budget

What does best practice look like?

We’ve talked about communication as a cornerstone to best practice for other KPIs, and QA is no different.

When you’re designing your QA scorecard, bring your agents on the journey with you – what skills do they think should be included in the assessment? Which stages of the customer journey? And how much weight should each of these elements be given?

Use this information to define clear and specific criteria for agent evaluation, and provide targeted feedback and coaching once assessments are complete. It’s also a good idea to give agents the chance to appeal their scores, especially given the sometimes-subjective nature of scorecards.

If you’re outsourcing your collections, you should have strong communication with third-party providers too. At Sigma Connected, our clients’ QA frameworks vary dramatically – some scorecards have 100 individual criteria per call, others just 5,

but there’s never been a structural framework we’ve not been able to adapt to.

As long as your QA framework is driven by compliance requirements, regulatory requirements, and KPI standards, it will continue to deliver for your business.

Finally, you could also consider the role of automation and technology when it comes to monitoring quality, for a cost-effective solution that frees up agent time. At Sigma Connected, we combine technologies such as speech analytics with manual, human-led monitoring to deliver the best QA insights.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION (CSAT)

What is it?

Customer Satisfaction score, or CSAT, measures how customers feel about their experience at key touchpoints in the customer journey.

How do we measure it?

Customer Satisfaction scores are usually measured via a short survey, where customers are asked to rate their experience on a numerical scale.

Some businesses use a 1-5 scale, where 1 is ‘Very Dissatisfied’ and 5 is ‘Very Satisfied’, while others prefer a 1-10 scale, which allows more room for neutrality.

Why is it important?

In our opinion, our final KPI is the most important of all. This is because of the impact it has on not just the success of your collections department, but the wider business.

As well as being a way to measure and optimise customer experience, a strong CSAT score usually correlates with better Payment Secured and Payment Collected Rates.

Positive interactions around collections can then lead to improved customer satisfaction and retention – great news for the sales department.

In short: satisfied customers = loyal customers.

Key performance obstacles

• Low survey response rates
• High survey bias
• Handling angry customers
• Inconsistent agent performance
• Monitoring quality across multiple channels

What does best practice look like?

The first step to improving Customer Satisfaction scores is collecting them accurately.

Take surveys immediately after the interaction if you can, and keep them short, simple, and easy to complete (e.g. via SMS). You could even provide incentives, such as prize draws, to help persuade customers to complete them. Remember that email and social media conversations may span over multiple interactions, so only send your survey when you’re sure the conversation is complete.

If customers are dissatisfied, reach out to them to resolve issues.

The worst thing you can do with a negative CSAT score is nothing.

If they’re satisfied, think about why – how can you build on that satisfaction rating? A good place to start is thinking about value-add resources and support, and regularly training your staff in soft skills.

The more you collect Customer Satisfaction scores, the more you’ll understand their expectations. The more you understand, the more you can act on to help improve your other KPIs.

CONCLUSION

Automation and the human touch: how to balance them both for improved KPIs

While discussing the above KPIs, we noticed that a few key themes were coming up again and again under ‘best practice’.

Some were expected – such as compliance and effective communication. But technology, automation, and outsourcing were more of a surprise.

After all, at Sigma Connected, we’re very vocal about our belief that the human touch is an essential component of every collections strategy. Especially when conversations around debt can be so sensitive and highly-charged. This is supported by statistics, as 99% of customers feel more comfortable with a human assisting to resolve their issues.

However, when 69% of consumers attribute their positive customer service experiences to the quick resolution of their issues, it’s important not to overlook automation.

Automating your agents’ admin burden allows them to spend more time building relationships with customers, and helping them to make payments. You can also use technology to offer self-service options, collect information and audit practices, leading to more effective, efficient operations overall.