3 Tips for Texting in Collections

Matt Edmunds

Did you know that 83 percent of text messages are opened within three minutes and tend to return a response in only 90 seconds? Adding text messaging to your contact strategies increases contact rates, reduces agent costs, and increases collections. With six billion text messages sent every day in the US, capitalizing on the power and immediacy of the mobile channel can provide clear benefits for both collectors and account holders.

Some tactics to consider to ensure a successful mobile collection strategy include:

1. “Opt” for being compliant. It can be easy to ensure compliance, but you need a strategy that is more robust than just sending FTEU messages or gaining opt-in. While it is clear that conducting collections via mobile has many benefits, it is important for organizations that they are always messaging in a compliant manner at the state and federal level. Working with an experienced partner who makes navigating lesser-known regulations such as mobile consent, contact attempt controls, and carrier deactivation list processing can help reduce risk.

2. Being “cross” can be good in collections. Increase contacts, promise-to-pay, and payments by adding in a cross-channel strategy.  But don’t stop there. Reduce costs by promoting auto-pay and self-service payment options across multiple channels like outbound IVR and text. Create customer dialogs that require live follow-up are escalated to agents. Transfer of sensitive information can link from text to SSL web pages.

3. “Chat” with debtors on their mobile device. Maximize results and possibly reduce costs to collect by ensuring you create a two-way text conversation.  A two-way text conversation is accessible by everyone, and can be automated and/or agent-assisted. Similar to a web chat, agents can chat with debtors via text messaging. Although the number of smartphones with the ability to reach the Internet are over half, 80 percent of mobile phone users text message.

Want to learn more? Contact us today or register for our webinar on August 27th, “Boost Your Collections Strategy with Mobile.”