LOCAL AUTHORITY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS EVOLUTION MARKET SURVEY

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* 1. Please provide your details

Name

Role

Organisation

Email (You must enter a valid address so that we can send you the report)

Phone number

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* 2. What are your two most significant challenges to executing digital transformation for automated customer engagement?

Understanding the benefits of digital (making the business case)

Budget provision

The volume of the benefits (business case already completed)

Defining digital collections strategy

Legal services

Internal skills/resources

Internal IT support

Internal IT systems

Alignment with strategic priorities

Siloed service departments

Vendor selection

Lack of benchmark data

Too many potential suppliers and capabilities

Lack of benchmark data

Other (please specify)

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* 3. For a digital project to be approved, what level of financial return is the organisation looking for?

1-3x investment costs

3-6 x investment costs

9-11x investment costs

12x investment costs

Please add any comments you feel are relevant to this answer.

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* 4. What are the top two reasons you would expand your digital capability in the coming months?

Reduced cost to serve/cost to collect

Increase accelerate cash collected

Reduce arrears levels

Reduced bad debt provision

Understand customer needs

Improve customer and agent satisfaction

Automate and digitise customer engagements

Increase self-service levels

Reduce reliance on human operations

Handle increased volume of accounts

Meet regulations

Reduce complaints

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* 5. How would you rate your digital collections capability against your peers?

The best

Good

Average

Poor

Not sure

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* 6. What level of automation/self service do you currently have in the revenue collections department?

0-25%

25-50%

75-90%

90%+

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* 7. Do you know your cost to collect on your digital and non-digital/traditional channels?

Yes

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* 8. Do you have an accurate view of how your bad debts have improved due to previous digital collection activity in the revenue collections department?

Yes

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* 9. How many two-way digital channels do you offer in revenue collections?

Clear

i We adjusted the number you entered based on the slider’s scale.

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* 10. On which digital channel do you see the most contact e.g. SMS?

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* 11. Do your digital channels work in real-time together across channels, e.g. when customers reply to an SMS, they can immediately receive a callback from another channel?

Yes

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* 12. How many different ways can your customers pay on digital channels?

Clear

i We adjusted the number you entered based on the slider’s scale.

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* 13. Please explain what happens on digital channels when an agreed payment is missed.

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* 14. Please explain what happens on digital channels when a recurring payment is declined.

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* 15. Can you store card payment details so it is easy for customers to pay on digital channels when they return?

Yes

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* 16. Please confirm what technological advancement has had the single most significant impact on your digital collections outcomes in the past year.

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* 17. How do your digital channels work with your core operational system(s)?

Batch file

Real-time

Both

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* 18. If a customer does something on digital channels, can your staff see that event in the collections system quickly or near real-time?

Yes immediately

Yes but it takes over 12-24 hours

We are working on that

Don't know

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* 19. Do you think your staff may call a customer when they have already completed the required action on digital channels?

Yes

It happens sometimes

It happens frequently

It is a big problem for us

Not sure

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* 20. Please select all the digital engagement channels you offer customers in revenue collections.

1-way SMS

Interactive SMS

Interactive automated voice recognition

Automated telephony (touchtone)

Interactive email (reply to email)

Facebook Messenger

Video messaging (human to human)

Desktop browser web portal

Any device web portal

Mobile app

Manual agent web chat

Other (please specify)

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* 21. What are your current most popular channels used in revenue collections? Please select up to three answers.

Human voice

Interactive SMS

Interactive automated voice recognition

Automated telephony (touchtone)

Interactive email (reply to email)

Facebook Messenger

Video messaging

Desktop browser web portal

Any device web portal

Mobile app

Other (please specify)

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* 22. Do you know the average volume split on each of these channels?

Yes

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* 23. Do you think your contact centre staff and your customers would benefit from video calling, helping the customer to see the collector virtually?

Yes

Maybe

Please add any comments to your answer stating why you have this view.

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* 24. What functions do you offer on digital channels? Please select all that apply.

Customer authentication

Payment now

Payment later

Part payment

Promise to pay (PTP)

Have paid

Store payment details

Talk to agent (call back)

Live chat with agent

Payment plans setup

Change payment plan

Income and expenditure assessment

Update account/personal information

Debt advice

Raise a complaint

Give feedback on service

Set up alerts preferences

Select preferred communication channel

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* 25. Do you use chatbot technology, and what does it do?

Yes I use it for simple FAQs

Yes, it is personalised to customer account data

I don't use chatbot technology

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* 26. Does your chatbot do any of the following?

Authentication

Take payments

Set up plan

Provide personalised account data to customer

Debt advice

None of the above

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* 27. Please provide any other information you feel is important about your digital channels as part of our research.

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* 28. What technically drives the conversation with your customers?

The communications system receives accounts and decides what to send and what channel to use

The collections system determines everything e.g. message ID, channel

Automated and manual intervention

I don't know

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* 29. Do you need to complete a formal income and expenditure assessment process for customers in certain situations?

Yes

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* 30. How do you complete an income and expenditure assessment?

Manually

Manually and digital webform

Manually, digital with open banking automation

If open banking, what % of customers select this method?

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* 31. Do you use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to enable your digital channels to work better with the revenue collection/operational system(s)?

Yes

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* 32. How do you achieve the best user experience on your digital channels? Please select all that apply.

Revenue collections staff validate all the messaging

Marketing or other departments have final review

We take the lead from the vendor

We hire an external organisation that specialises in user experience

Other (please specify)

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* 33. Do you send different tonality messages to customers based on their risk segment?

Yes

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* 34. Do you have firm plans to include revenue collections capability in your online or mobile banking interfaces in the next 12 months if you do not already?

Already have it

Yes

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* 35. Do you feel you adequately understand the capability of the top 5 omnichannel vendors?

Yes

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* 36. Please state who you think are the top 3 omni-channel/automated communication vendors.

Vendor 1

Vendor 2

Vendor 3

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* 37. Are you happy you have the correct strategic input from your vendor to make you a world-class leader in digital collections?

Yes

Not anymore

They are improving, and we are growing together

No, not at all

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* 38. Do you have the proper delivery support from your vendor?

Yes

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* 39. Have you ever completed an automated or manual survey (NPS) with your customers to understand how happy they are with the general collections process and digital engagement channels you offer?

Yes

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* 40. Do you have adequate management information or dashboards to review performance on your digital channels?

Yes

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* 41. Is it easy and low cost to make changes to your digital revenue collections strategy?

Yes

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* 42. How often do you run champion challengers on your digital strategies?

We do not

Once a year

2-5 times a year

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* 43. Do you feel you can run trials and or champion challengers for digital communications with the right measurements and controls?

Yes

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* 44. If you send an email, do you have added features?

We use DKIM

We send under our sub-domain

None of the above

We don't send an email

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* 45. Do you use machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) in your digital engagement strategy?

Yes

No, it is judgemental rules configured by humans

Both

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* 46. How do you authenticate customers on digital channels?

Same questions as staff would ask

Stronger authentication than the collections operation

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* 47. Do you use multiple vendors for digital collections?

1-2

I don't know

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* 48. Do you think the revenue collections communication system should be the same system that is used for communications for the rest of the customer journey, or are you OK with it being separate?

It should be the same

It's ok that it is separate

Please state why you anwsered the way you did.

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* 49. What are your 3 biggest volume contact drivers in the revenue collections department?

Driver 1

Driver 2

Driver 3

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* 50. If you could do your digital projects again, what would you have done differently?

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* 51. Are you interested in Arum supporting you develop an strong business case based digital strategy?

I'd like to find out more about how Arum could help

Not at this time

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* 52. Would you be interested in paying for a 3-day assessment to help benchmark your capability against your competitors and understand your top 3 areas for improvement?

I'd like to find out more about how Arum could help

Not at this time