3 principles to tackle the emerging debt collection crisis

The economic downturn caused by the coronavirus is bringing back a part of the 80s no one was feeling nostalgic about: the spike in debt.

Similarly to 40 years ago, major banks, finance companies and collection agencies are muscling up call centers to respond to the arrears crisis for credit cards, auto loans, student loans and other forms of debt. For example, less than 11% of people with federal student debt are repaying their loans during COVID-19. A debt collection crisis is threatening the financial services industry.

Many lenders and servicers are evaluating how they can gain the agility,  flexibility and speed needed to meet rising borrower expectations, without compromising security or regulatory compliance. The bar is consistently rising for a truly seamless omnichannel borrower experience.

Conversely, cost pressures are propelling the need for more self-service and artificial intelligence (AI). Digital natives of Gen-Y and Gen-Z — which now represent almost half of the US population — are directly influenced by the rise of consumer brands like Google, Apple, and Amazon. They grew up with flawless digital payment and borrowing experiences.

Now is the time for banks to transition to a more flexible platform offered by cloud solutions.  Leveraging enterprise-grade customer engagement platforms like Talkdesk that securely integrate with customer data systems, marketing automation platforms and core systems will empower banks to create specialized repayment programs. With cloud-based flexible platforms, banks can quickly deploy omnichannel campaigns to meet customers where they are offering services and products to ensure positive repayment outcomes–without compromising privacy or compliance.

This will help banks differentiate their brand and allow them to deliver superior customer experience (CX). When built on the following three key principles, a sustainable modern cloud platform can help you rise to the CX challenge and become the go-to servicer for borrowers and partners:

1. Flexibility

The core platforms of borrower service should manage more than just one product. The flows are very similar, such as onboarding, payment management, recording and collecting. Lending plays a huge part in every business, and these similarities can expand the core debt servicing and collections that can affect multiple industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, retail and many other businesses.

Having a CX platform that has open APIs and integrations to quickly plug into partners’ core systems and contact centers to meet your business growth needs is a game-changer.

2. Speed

Your partners and stakeholders need a fast turnaround. They need to rapidly shift as the macro or microenvironment changes. The pandemic has taught us all how quickly the world can change. Those businesses that quickly adapted survived. And those that invested in their communications and engagement platforms working seamlessly for the borrowers thrived.

3. Trust

Trust is hard to gain but easy to lose. Ensuring your systems are compliant is essential to maintaining the highest levels of security. Talkdesk has over 30 security certifications to guard your data at the server level to the operator level. Safeguarding your clients’ personal information, data and privacy is paramount.

At Talkdesk, we’ve built an extensible cloud-based contact center solution that integrates with your CRM, core banking systems, insurance claims, and wealth management systems to provide a seamless service and sales experience for your borrowers and employees.