Success Speaks: Exploring the Future of Payments Collections in Auto-Finance with SAFCO
When it comes to improving collections, there’s one simple question your organization should ask before embarking on any type of payments project: what does “customer service” mean to our customers?
For non-prime auto finance company SAFCO, the answer wasn’t to be found in expanded call centers or longer office hours. In fact, quite the opposite. In a recent webinar, SAFCO CFO Gary Stein joined ACI to discuss the future of collections and how SAFCO bolstered their payment options, improved collections and eased the payments experience for customers.
The Auto Finance Payments Landscape
SAFCO faced a problem that is far from unique in the collections business. Delinquencies were rising across the industry, and customers were moving away from outdated payment methods, such as checks, forcing SAFCO to add new payment options to their platform.
These additions were not without their challenges, as new payment options can often add complexity to the payments process – something that can frustrate customers and hinder collections. SAFCO understood this, as evidenced by Stein’s simple, yet all important declaration, “You want to make it easy to pay us.”
Building a Business Case
SAFCO’s goals revolved around increasing payment options, reducing operating expenses and improving the efficiency of their collections agents. Most of all, they knew they had to update their payment methodologies. “If you don’t have these (new) methodologies, people aren’t going to know how to pay you,” said Stein.
SAFCO satisfied their business case through a series of optimization efforts, including mobile payments and the implementation of ACI® Virtual Collection Agent™.
Customer Self-Service
When it comes to what “customer service” meant to SAFCO customers, Stein’s team realized that customers don’t want a lot of contact with the company. They want to be able to make their payments on their own time, with 24x7 availability.
Virtual Collection Agent helped make this a reality. Post-implementation, SAFCO noticed a drop in call center calls, while collections improved. Operating expenses were reduced due to increased efficiencies, which also allowed collections agents to focus on specific accounts, as opposed to being overburdened tracking many. What’s more, because Virtual Collection Agent is configurable, it allowed SAFCO to create their own rules and offer various deals to customers based upon their responses. For instance, if a customer wishes to make a partial payment, Virtual Collection Agent can be tailored to adjust their payment plan or make a complementary offer to ease the collection.
Utilizing the Entire Customer Journey
SAFCO was also savvy in how they leveraged their many customer touchpoints to add value or communicate new payment opportunities. “Any time we have their attention, we’re going to utilize that to let them know that there are easier and more effective ways to pay.”
In particular, SAFCO optimized their website to encourage people to make a payment online. They also used the standard customer invoice to advertise the different payment options now available. Finally, internal customer representatives shared this information with customers who had called in, not only helping to drive the self-service options but also to reduce these calls going forward.
For SAFCO, the future of collections is already occurring today. By delivering self-service options, optimizing their mobile methodologies and using the entire customer payments journey to their advantage, they have successfully driven more collections, reduced operating expenses and improved the customer experience for their entire customer base.
Learn more about the future of collections, including how new payments technology can make collections faster, simpler and more secure: view the on-demand webinar.
Find out more about ACI Virtual Collection Agent – an inline debt collection service that emulates the best collection agents, reducing stress while increasing overall consistency and efficiency in debt collection.
Related Blog Posts
EMV at the Pump: Is it Really That Secure?
Last weekend I went spring skiing, well spring snowboarding — but you know what I mean. It was sunny, with temperatures in the 50s — an epic day of carving mashed potatoes to close my snowboarding season.
PCI DSS 4.0 Compliance – A Catalyst for Progressive Consumer Payments Modernization
2021 marks the beginning of the implementation of the new PCI DSS standards, with the final version of PCI DSS v4.0 currently planned for completion in Q4 2021. The planning phase, which has been run collaboratively by the Security Standards Council with the global industry since 2019, has now come to an end and the time window for global financial institutions to begin implementing their solutions has begun. In short, if you haven’t started yet, you’re already behind the curve.
Fintech’s March Madness: The Top Seeds “Jonesing” for Glory in Indiana
Ahh March Madness… my favorite time of year for sports (and gambling) and also the one tournament where I’m typically out of the running in my myriad betting pools after day one. While I’ve paid only marginal attention to actual college basketball this year, I’ve been keeping much closer tabs on the madness that has enveloped fintech. And while 68 teams comprise the real March Madness tournament, I’m really only focused on the top four fintech seeds… and that’s primarily due to length of this post (as well as my waning attention span).
Cloud Trends That Will Shape India’s Banking Sector in 2021
India’s banks and financial institutions (FIs) continue to adapt and innovate as the pandemic drives mass adoption of digital payments. Long term success will depend on successfully ramping up services and ensuring profitability while reshaping customer experiences. This is where the power of the cloud will come into play: In 2021, cloud will increasingly power vital infrastructure for India’s banking and payments sector, improving remote collaboration as well as enabling faster and more agile application development and deployment.
What Will the World of Post-Pandemic Payments Look Like? [Dave Birch Q&A]
Dave Birch is a leading global authority on payments and digital identity, who is no stranger to predicting what the future of financial services has in store. After delivering the keynote presentation at our recent ACI Edge Virtual: Banks & Intermediaries, we gathered some insights from Dave on what the world of payments could look like, post pandemic.
Women in Payments: Breaking into Payments and Cybersecurity
On a virtual panel during the Women in Payments Symposium Canada, Donna Teevens, director of global information security, ACI Worldwide, joined a number of women from payments organizations including Interac, PayPal, RBC and Dentons to discuss, “The Key to Cybersecurity in a Crisis and Beyond.”
Payments in a Post-Coronavirus World: How the Pandemic Is Influencing Tomorrow’s Industry in Latin America
While the novel coronavirus has (understandably) dominated the day-to-day focus of today’s payment players, the fact is, at some point we will either fully adapt or be living in a post-coronavirus world. How can our industry prepare? In a recent webinar hosted by Fintech Americas, we brought together experts from Redeban Multicolor, Red Link and PROSA to explore where they see the industry going – with a specific emphasis on Latin American markets – and what they’re doing to ensure future success.
The Pandemic Has Accelerated the New Era of Acquiring
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many trends already taking shape in consumer purchasing behavior. Almost overnight, routine activities ranging from picking up groceries to buying gas unexpectedly became something that they had never been before – risky.
How National Central Infrastructure Initiatives for Real-time Payments Create Immediate Business Opportunities for Merchants
More and more countries and regional alliances are investing in the creation of new financial market infrastructures. Governments and leaders of central banks have decided that the finance industry needs investment to be fit for the demands of digital economies, suitable for the trailblazing businesses of the fourth industrial revolution.
Payments Modernization in the Cloud: An Inflection Point in the History of Payments
Public cloud is one of the big buzzwords in payments right now. While a few years ago financial institutions were reluctant to embrace the technology, they are now among the most likely to do so. ACI discussed the topic of Payments Modernization in the Cloud during a recent webinar, moderated by Finextra’s Head of Research Gary Wright. Katrin Boettger caught up with the panellists — Ciaran Chu, head of cloud at ACI; Peter Hazou, business strategy leader at Microsoft and Lu Zurawski, practice lead, retail banking at ACI — about why the COVID-19 pandemic might be a further catalyst for the worldwide adoption of cloud technology.