Years ago, I was brought on as an Operations Manager for a medium-sized collection agency, and I had to get to know the entire company and their processes. So I spent a day on the collection floor with the agents, doing what they did, to see what their system was like, what consumers were saying, and so on. Aside from earning the good will of the collection team because I was willing to roll up my sleeves and sit with them, I learned that their process for taking a payment was terrible – I mean, really terrible. It took 5 minutes with the debtor to take a payment by credit card over the phone, and then another 10 minutes afterwards talking to the internal payment department.
Never mind the internal process – the process of taking the payment with the consumer was awful. The longer it took, and the more information you need from the consumer to post the payment, the more likely they are going to not cooperate, hang up, or have a bad experience.
In customer service and sales, they talk about friction slowing down sales – the slower it is and the more you ask, the less likely you make a sale. Same thing for taking payments.
Why is this relevant now to this week’s blog? Well, we just removed friction from a payment process.
Up till now, if a consumer was willing to pay our company, and they wanted to pay by Interac ETransfer, we would tell them verbally, or give instructions by SMS or email on how to do it – log into your bank, set up Kingston Data & Credit as a payee, send an eTransfer to pmt@kingstondc.com, and put their claim number in the memo field.
There’s a lot of ways that could go wrong, or a consumer ends up not following up, or giving up.
This week, we built an API to build a Interac request hyperlink through a fintech vendor called Clik2Pay that goes out to the consumer through our SMS system. When they click on it, it prompts them to log into their bank, and then asks if they authorize the Interac payment for the specific amount we are asking for. And then it’s done.
My team is thrilled, and now we’re building it out to email, payment arrangements, consumers that have broken arrangements with us, and so on – it’s going to take a few weeks to fully implement it. But it’s less friction on a payment channel, easier for our staff, and has the opportunity to be part of an automated reminder process.
How are you removing friction on your payment processes? Drop me a note at blair@receivableaccounts.com.
Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data & Credit
Cambridge, Ontario
226-946-1730
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