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Whether the economy is good or bad, collection is a tough business. It must continue to evolve with time to be cost effective and efficient. For instance, with advances in telecommunication technologies, manual calling is no longer practical for outbound contact centers, especially those working for collection agencies. To dramatically improve contact rates, and thereby collection revenues, they must adopt automated dialers and contact management solutions.

In fact, they need tools that automate day to day tasks, extend contact centers reach to more customers, and help organizations collect more debt. In an insideARM.com report, Columbia Ultimate’s (News - Alert) director of marketing Julie A. Melton presents some tips to implement automation in the current collection practices.

According to Columbia Ultimate’s marketing executive, employing advanced outbound predictive dialing technologies can improve automation of routine communication tasks, which in-turn improves capacity and collector productivity. It also significantly reduces operating costs, including telephony expenses, payment processing costs, personnel expenses, and capital expenditures on technology. When using such predictive dialers, Melton prefers a comprehensive package that includes interactive voice response (IVR), voice messaging, call recording, SMS/text messaging, and an automated payment center. Most importantly, it must work hand in hand with your company’s core collections software.

Next, Melton recommends integrating the payment process into contact strategies. This will automate the payment process and easily convert those contacts into collected dollars, says Columbia’s marketing director. The report shows that this comprehensive, real-time automated payment management solution gives collectors more opportunities to make high-quality contacts and account holders more options to settle their accounts.

Furthermore, the report stresses on customizing the workflow engine to automate operational strategies, which results in effective accounts receivable management (ARM (News - Alert)) operations.

Likewise, automating scoring and data management also plays a key role in collection solutions. For example, the report indicates that accurate data is crucial to making decisions and prioritizing collection efforts. When data services tools are incorporated into core collections software, the agency is better equipped to forecast payment probabilities and identify accounts that  are most likely to generate revenue, wrote Melton.

Lastly, the report concludes that the seamless integration of all tools will automate the debt collection process.