AI call systems present a boon for many businesses. They help improve a variety of processes, streamline work, and even reduce the number of employees a company needs to hire.
However, debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems are particularly interesting. Businesses have a lot to gain from AI and are simply missing out if they fail to do so.
To make the change, though, businesses need to understand the power of these systems. Doing so will allow them to properly utilize them and propel their operations into the future.
Understanding AI-Powered Call Management Systems
Before diving into the details surrounding debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems, it is important to understand what AI-powered call management systems are in the first place.
These are systems that use AI to either power the calls themselves, enhance the processes of calling, or power the decision-making process behind the calls. They use natural language processing (NLP) and conversational AI technologies to do this.
Powered by these processes, they are capable of:
- Making/taking calls: AI systems, like the Voice AI system offered by 2X Solutions, are capable of understanding and responding to human speech. In doing so, they can take calls and either respond with information or route the call where it needs to go. They can also make calls and add a level of personalization that, in prior years, only humans were capable of doing.
- Monitoring calls: AI systems can monitor calls as they happen. Through this process, companies can get a recording or even a transcript of the call and can monitor compliance.
- Enhanced calling: Businesses can also use AI systems to enhance the calling process. They can provide automatic call scheduling and can give the person placing the call more information about the call. These features make them a powerful tool for any business that regularly makes phone calls.
- Decision-making: AI systems can provide employees with information that will enhance the decision-making process. In doing so, they can identify who to call, when to call them, and other key details.
Improving Efficiency in Debt Collection
The first major advantage of debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems is better efficiency. In providing an automated process with the speed of a computer, AI systems dramatically change the way companies approach debt collection.
Automated call scheduling and reminders are one way this happens. It takes time for employees to decide when to schedule calls and reminders, and then it takes even more time to actually enter these decisions into scheduling software.
However, AI does this all automatically. It even does so with the backing of data, which it uses to better inform the process.
When businesses use them to take calls, AI systems make it easier for the right person to get the call. These systems will take in enough information to determine who is calling and why. They will then forward this information along with the call to the right person.
In this way, they effectively function as a virtual front desk. In some situations, this allows companies to eliminate positions associated with an actual front desk, or at the very least, reduce the number or workload of these positions.
The best part is that all of this can usually happen within a company’s current call system. Through API integration, an AI can enter a system and work with it rather than existing as an entirely separate system. When integrated in this way, it lets employees work with something they already know and feel comfortable with.
In all of these ways, AI automates debt collection. These changes eliminate the amount of time employees have to spend on certain activities and, thus, allow them to spend this time in more productive ways. Through changes like this, companies improve productivity and reduce costs.
Increasing Debt Recovery Rates
AI-powered systems can increase the recovery rates of debt collection companies. These systems are capable of processing immense amounts of data. They can look for insights and trends that would go overlooked by the human eye.
All of this changes the decision-making process with data-driven insights. By analyzing the data surrounding debtors, AI is capable of identifying risk patterns associated with them and the chance of a successful debt recovery. In doing so, these algorithms can identify people to focus on or change the way companies structure their calls.
However, this isn’t the only way AI improves debt recovery rates. By properly utilizing an AI system’s in-depth knowledge of debtors and their preferences, AI systems can create more personalized interactions with these people. In doing so, they can increase the likelihood that interactions will last.
Reflection can even happen during debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems. A company can enter its past failures and successes into the AI’s knowledge base. The AI is then able to weigh these against performance metrics to determine what went wrong and what went right, thus opening up potential solutions for the future.
These improvements to debt recovery rates are more relevant now than ever before, as loan recovery rates have been below average in recent years.
Ensuring Compliance and Ethical Practices
One of the most interesting elements of Voice AI systems, like the system offered by 2X Solutions, is their ability to monitor conversations. They are capable of recording the conversation, transcribing it, and analyzing it. They can do this after the conversation takes place or even while it is happening.
Conversation monitoring like this makes it far easier for debt collection companies to ensure compliance and follow better ethical practices.
Benefits here include:
- Catching mistakes: By tracking a live conversation, an AI system can alert an employee if they made a mistake and need to fix it. The same is true when it comes to ensuring employees follow the company’s ethical guidelines.
- Regulatory compliance: Through conversation monitoring, companies can ensure that their employees follow any and all regulatory measures.
- Improving interactions: By recording a conversation and analyzing it, an AI system is able to look for places where the employee’s behavior could improve. After this review, the employee can make changes in the future and get better results.
Challenges With AI in Debt Collection
While AI presents a lot of opportunities in debt collection, it also brings some challenges to the table. Being aware of challenges with AI prevents a company from falling victim to them.
Chief among these challenges is the potential for AI to heighten systemic biases. AI systems simply take in information, and that information always has the potential to carry bias with it. Because of this, many institutions have found that AI and algorithms can deepen divides among people.
If this happens, companies using these systems can see negative publicity if others accuse them of biased debt collection methods. Accusations like this will damage any company.
To prevent all of this, companies need to keep the potential for bias in mind. If used properly, AI can actually allow a company to function with less bias than ever before. However, this only happens if the company actively seeks out this solution.
Future Outlook
The future of AI in debt collection looks similar to the future of AI’s role across workforces. As AI advances, it will become more accurate and capable of more appropriately replicating human behavior.
For debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems, this likely means AI will get even better at doing what it does. It will get better at taking calls, making calls, routing calls, and providing data-based decision-making.
The industry will likely see the biggest change in decision-making, which will increasingly influence the managerial level. Right now, mistrust of AI keeps many from relying on it in this regard. However, as AI becomes more accurate and people grow more comfortable with it, this will change.
Outside of this, one of the most important factors to consider when thinking about the future outlook of AI is how it changes the competitive landscape of business. Many companies are adopting AI systems and deriving a lot of advantages from them. These companies appear to be ready to overtake their competitors.
Competition like this creates an environment where companies need to stay on top of the latest AI systems in order to stay relevant. Doing so starts with adopting some sort of system in order to become familiar with it. Even if this isn’t the system a company will use forever, it introduces employees to the technology and prepares them for the future.
Streamlining Debt Collection Processes With AI
AI can dramatically improve debt collection. With it, companies can improve efficiency, see greater recovery rates, and better manage their business. Without it, companies face the threat of falling behind their competition.
With all this in mind, it is clear that every company should at least consider pairing their debt collection processes with AI-powered call management systems. Doing so not only improves the way they do business but prepares them for a future with AI.
Want to improve your debt collection process? Contact 2X Solutions to learn about the Voice AI program today.
