In the fast-paced world of collections, effectively managing preventive and early collections is crucial to controlling the portfolio. Anticipating and resolving issues during the pre-collections phase reduces overdue debt and strengthens customer relationships, fostering positive and sustainable collaboration. A well-executed early collections strategy ensures recovery goals are met efficiently.
Technology plays a key role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of recovery during these stages, optimizing management, increasing contact rates, and enhancing interaction quality. This enables companies to offer personalized and proactive service, avoiding negative customer perceptions.
Technology Applied to the Early Stages of Preventive Collections
Omnichannel communication is essential for a seamless and personalized experience in preventive collections. Unlike multichannel approaches, which simply offer multiple communication options, omnichannel strategies integrate all channels, enabling hyper-personalized interactions.
This allows companies to reach customers through their preferred medium—voice, chat, email, or social media—using the most effective and cost-efficient channel for each customer and stage. Integration ensures smooth information flow across channels, enabling frictionless transitions and more efficient collections.
Generative AI to Expand Reach in Collections
Generative AI has transformed preventive collections by optimizing response times, reducing operational errors, and expanding outreach in debt recovery.
Chatbots handle basic inquiries and provide detailed information about outstanding payments, while voicebots automate calls to remind customers of overdue obligations.
The evolution to generative chatbots and voicebots has expanded AI’s role in collections. These advanced versions not only respond to predefined commands but also generate responses and perform complex actions autonomously, enabling more personalized and effective interactions.
Generative voicebots can now manage entire collection processes, including payment collection, direct payment administration, or transferring calls to human agents based on customer needs. This capability extends collection reach and helps reduce operational costs by optimizing the use of human and technological resources.
Dialing Cube to Increase Contact Rates
Efficient call management is essential to maximize outreach in pre-collections. The dialing cube, powered by AI, automatically selects the best carrier at any given moment, optimizing contact rates and improving recovery.
This system analyzes multiple factors in real time—carrier availability, cost, and connection quality—to make informed decisions about the best time and method to contact customers. This optimization ensures more effective interactions, increasing recovery rates and enhancing the customer experience throughout the collections process.
Speech & Text Analytics
This technology analyzes customer conversations in real time, identifying patterns and trends that influence strategic decisions. Using predictive analytics, it determines the most effective time to collect from each customer. It helps manage timely payment reminders for forgetful customers and identifies those less suitable for new credit, feeding insights back into the credit origination process.
By using the customer’s actual voice to identify the reason for non-payment, it eliminates agent subjectivity and improves classification accuracy. With precise and relevant data, significant improvements can be made to the overall collections strategy.
Combined Strategy: The Key to Early Recovery
Each tool is effective on its own, but integration amplifies their benefits. A strategy that combines digital channels, generative AI, and human agent collaboration increases recovery effectiveness and improves the customer experience.
This model uses tools such as:
Sending up to 1 million daily messages to ensure coverage
Using six or more carriers simultaneously to guarantee contact
Chatbots to manage inquiries and payment reminders
Generative voicebots to handle complex negotiations and quickly transfer to human agents
All managed through a single interface that centralizes customer data and previous bot interactions.
Benefits of the Combined Strategy
Greater reach and efficiency: Multiple contact channels increase customer coverage and recovery rates
Hyper-personalization: Integrates data from various channels to tailor interactions to each customer’s needs
Reduced operational costs: Automates repetitive tasks with AI, cutting costs by up to 40%, allowing agents to focus on complex and strategic cases, and using more cost-effective digital media
Continuous improvement of customer experience: Delivers consistent and seamless communication across all touchpoints, boosting satisfaction and enhancing the company’s reputation in the collections market
Results of the Combined Strategy
Implementing a combined strategy in pre-collections and early collections has proven highly effective in improving financial and operational outcomes.
“In 2024, one of Mexico’s leading banks achieved 73.26% efficiency with a combined strategy (agents, digital channels, and voicebots), compared to 68.85% using voicebots alone.”
This example highlights the importance of combining automation and AI with the human touch of specialized agents. While digital technology enables scalable operations and improves precision in collections management, human intervention ensures a deep understanding of customer context and individual needs.
At Pentafon, we firmly believe in the power of technology to enhance processes, achieve goals, and enrich customer experience. As leaders in the contact center industry and experts in collections and preventive collections, we understand that evolving toward a combined strategy is a continuous process that requires expert oversight and participation.
That’s why we continue to advance our collections model, where AI analyzes real-time data to optimize strategies, helping our clients adapt quickly to changing market behaviors and keeping us at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.