The challenge

A cloud collaboration platform that enables EMEA companies to build customised, connected apps had €30 million in outstanding debt from its clients that the company struggled to collect. The business was growing at rate that overwhelmed its small, in-house team of collections associates.

Associates often lacked the right contact information for collecting debts. Also, invoices were sent through an automated system and, if a customer replied with a question or problem, there was no bandwidth for the in-house team to look at every response.

Our solution

We provided skilled collections associates who doubled the size of the company’s in-house collections team. Our associates, highly trained in delivering empathetic yet effective B2B collections support, focussed on debt outreach via email. Working off a lead list provided by the company, the associates concentrated their efforts on first and second touchpoints.

Our associates added a human touch to the company’s collections approach. Now, when customers replied to a debt collection email with a question about their bill or updated contact information, our associates quickly took action based on that feedback.

This led to a more accurate list of contacts and opened a line of communication that improved customer experience and increased the amount of debts collected.

A growing partnership

Our collections approach produced fast results for the company, with €5 million collected in just 90 days, 17% of the total outstanding debt. Our associates had greater success getting customers to respond to collections attempts, and the length of time between outreach attempts and repayment shrunk.

Our partnership with the company continues to grow. In fewer than two months after our work began, the client requested a back-office resource for doing cash application work. And based on our associates’ early success, the client plans to give our associates additional collections leads to target.