Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Pegasystems Knocks On Opportunities with New Collections Solution

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

In challenging economic times, individuals and firms do fall into debt, and most times, it’s not their own fault.  

The challenge is how to cost-effectively recover as much of the past-due sums as possible -- after all, firms to whom the debts are owed need that money to prevent themselves from going into serious debt -- without falling afoul of the law while equally, if not more importantly, avoiding losing the better customers for life. After all, good economic times will return, including for those whose accounts are in arrears. How they are treated will determine whether they will return, and recommend likewise to their fans via social media, or go elsewhere.

In response, Pegasystems has unveiled a new multi-channel solution that enables organizations to more intelligently manage their collections function. Pega Collections, which leverages Pegasystems’ (News - Alert) Build for Change technology, provides it says “a new approach to the collections process.” One, it says, will help organizations rapidly identify the most likely option that will facilitate a positive collection result and present it to the collection agent at time of interaction. This approach the firm says “delivers significantly higher collections results, while also ensuring positive customer interactions.” 

Collections and risk executives have traditionally been constrained by inflexible, outdated systems that limit their ability to intelligently collect debt from their customers, resulting in higher than acceptable customer loss rates, unnecessary charge-offs and increased operational costs, the firm points out. Pega Collections gives organizations powerful, real-time adaptive analytics that select the most effective communication channel, and intelligently guide users through personalized offers that balance customer needs with business objectives. The solution also combines this intelligence with business process automation capabilities, which drive inefficiencies out of the collections operation in all phases of collections management. 

Here are the Pega Collections highlights:

Real-time, interactive decision-making directly delivered to agents, assuring each customer receives a unique experience, optimizing the outcome of every interaction

A holistic view of each customer, including past interactions to guarantee compliant, consistent and optimal next-best action driven treatments for customers across all channels

Advanced routing, escalation and prioritization through sophisticated channel integration and work management

Automated collections processing, client communications and promise-to-pay management to drive out inefficiencies and ensure compliance

Pegasystems reports that its unique combination of BPM, case management, CRM and decision management capabilities ensures a holistic, “customer-centric” approach to managing collections. The result, it says, is a higher degree of offer acceptance with reduced operational costs and an improved customer experience, supporting both short term improvements in default recoveries and long-term client profitability.

“Organizations are looking for a smarter way to manage their collections operations,” says Bill Baggott, vice president of solution frameworks at Pegasystems. “This new solution enables them to not only work more efficiently, but to also work more intelligently with the advanced decisioning and analytics capabilities that Pegasystems now offers. This unique combination of capabilities in the Pega Collections solution helps an organization ensure that all of its clients receive a consistent level of service, across all channels and interactions, while also instituting business best practices to optimize every interaction and improve outcomes.”