Rapid growth in the telco market has led to a number of operators enjoying a large subscriber base, but who, inevitably, also support a high level of delinquent customers.

This article, adapted from a presentation given at this year’s Experian Decision Analytics European Telco Forum, examines how such operators with a high volume of customers in arrears can benefit from modern collections systems through the rehabilitation of more customers to unlock future revenue. The three key areas where operators can achieve this are policies, operational enhancements and technology.

Policies
A key element of modern collections solutions is the automatic and manual provisioning that can be achieved, so that suspension, termination and reactivation, barring and debarring and throttling and download restrictions can easily be applied to accounts to both enourage and reward payment.

Additionally, the ability to identify accounts that are spending in a manner inconsistent with their previous behaviour enables the elimination of potential fraud, as well as helping to reduce the potential for future overindebtedness.

Other policies which can be implemented with a modern collections solution include risk based prioritisation, behavioural scoring, and management and control of external DCAs.

Operational enhancements
Increasing the number of automated collections activities for low value simple debt enables collectors to concentrate on maximising the collection of higher value complex debt.

Other operational enhancements which can be achieved with a modern collections solution include automated diallers, skills based allocation, work load balancing and shadow credit limit monitoring.

Technology
Enabling operators to take advantage of their own technology allows collections costs to be significantly reduced. Pre-recorded reminder voice messages can be successful at reaching a large number of customers using very little resource and cost. The system indicates whether the message was even received and listened to, thus enabling the follow up activity to be paused for those messages successfully received to allow time for the customer to pay, whilst allowing an alternative collections activity to be performed for those who received the message and subsequently don’t respond after a defined period of time.

Enabling customers to self-serve through technological solutions supported by modern collections systems can yield increased collections by enabling customers to pay their bills at a time, and using a payment method, convenient to them.

Other technology which can be seen in a modern collections solution includes system scalability, enterprise integration and real-time interfacing.

Conclusion: Rehabilitation for future customer revenue
The key objective for those operators with a high volume of delinquent customers is to rehabilitate high value customers more quickly and cost efficiently so that future revenue can be achieved from customers who are cured to buy additional products and services.

One of the biggest challenges for operators handling a large number of customers is the impersonal approach which can result. The use of a specialist collections system which finely segments the portfolio enables operators to take a personalised approach, even amongst the largest customer base, to encourage customer loyalty and, hence, reduce churn.

Experian Decision Analytics’ newly announced Tallyman for Telcos solution meets the challenges facing today’s operators. Combining the proven Tallyman software with a new rapid deployment model, it enables telcos to collect more debt more quickly at lower cost while rehabilitating more customers.

Why Tallyman for telcos?

Matthew Gauler – Business Development Manager for Tallyman, Experian Decision Analytics - From his presentation given at the Experian Decision Analytics Telco Forum 2007

For more information on the Tallyman for Telcos solution or to request the full High Volume Debt Management Strategies for Telcos White Paper contact us

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