Adam Parks (00:00)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with another receivables webinar. Today I've got my good friend, Mr. Mark Reinhard joining me with Concepts2Code and Dial Connection. We're going to talk a little bit about that merger here shortly as well. But I wanted to frame today's discussion because everything comes down to predicting behavior and we're talking about Omnichannel.
And I think the industry is getting past the point of just talking about the rails of communications. And now we're starting to talk about how to optimize the strategies for outreach, collaborate and coordinate cross channels and build a consumable customer experience or a consistent customer experience to kind of lead into this a little bit in terms of where we are as an industry and our evolution of these types of communication technologies.
93% of organizations are adopting or exploring AI ML technology right now, which is a significant increase from two years ago, where 60% of companies said that they would never touch artificial intelligence. And this is from the 2025 TransUnion Debt Collection Industry Report. We talked about 76% of companies plan to increase their spending on technology solutions over the next two years.
60% of firms are now using text and SMS messaging to engage with consumers, which is up from 45% the year before, a significant increase in the use of the channel, and 87% of organizations providing a online consumer portal for off-channel experience or for offline or online experiences.
Mark, you kind of sit at the intersection of a lot of these different tools coming together. And for anyone who has not seen us speak together before, could you tell everyone a little bit about your background and let's talk about how you are actively deploying this type of technology across the space.
Mark Reinhard (02:05)
Yeah, absolutely. I've probably been in collections for at least 15 years, and a long, long time ago, many moons ago, I was a software consultant that just happened to work for multiple collection agencies and I sort of saw a gap in the technology at least 15 years ago. It's definitely picked up the pace since then, but I decided really focus everything towards that. And we started off doing a couple of payment portals, then we got into email, then we got into texting.
And now with the recent thing that will sort of our merger with Dial Connection, we're getting into more of call center software and a higher performance of texting. And we're focusing more on compliance because that's been, you know, while that's been part of the business, it's now a heavier part of the business with higher volume and larger customers.
Adam Parks (02:50)
We've been going through this expansion and you and I talk quite frequently. I love doing content with you because I always learned so much about the various channels, but now it's starting to get to the point of the orchestration across channels. And what does that start to look like in terms of intelligent communications and contacts and kind of to, to lead off the conversation here, your recent merger with Dial Connection, I thought was very interesting when you were explaining to me your purpose behind it.
Talk to me a little about that, bringing those organizations together and what kind of new capabilities and capacity that provided you in terms of the services you're bringing to the industry.
Mark Reinhard (03:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so we've worked with Dial Connection sort of through mutual customers for years and years and years. It might be even go 10 years back. And we always knew each other and we kind of worked. And then it's interesting when vendors work with other vendors, you kind of learn who can get stuff done and who, you know, it's nice when you're working with other, some IT companies, it's like, okay, you're at their mercy, but they've always been a great partner to work with. And this idea came up a couple of years ago.
And one of the reasons that, least from our perspective, that it really seemed like a great idea was the fact that the biggest segment of our business that's been increasing over the past few years is texting. And I think you can, it's been talked about for years and actually the numbers you read, I can't remember what the percentage was, I actually thought it was higher because every one of our customers is moving more to more texting.
And that's what we're getting asked about more and more. So we've done it for years. We've had a payment portal, email systems and, and a texting platform. But now we've worked with a lot of partners and vendors for texting for years and Dial Connection has their own robust, compliant and integrated texting system.
So from our perspective, that was the main thing that we were going to sort of bring to our customers. As an added bonus, part of the business that I don't even know as much about, and I will over time, is they've got an entire call center platform, because that's the direction that they've come from.
So we've come from the online, the payment portals, they've come from the call center platform and contact center. And then we've gone sort of been moving in the same direction and the intersection is really where it comes out. us, it was texting. Like I said, I got a lot to learn about call center platforms are my specialty is really the e-delivery and e-platforms. But this is, this is a huge benefit to our customers and potential customers because we can bring them so many services under one umbrella.
Adam Parks (05:26)
So you look at this as an opportunity to increase the quality and capacity of the channels used to drive those digital payments. So whether it be through the contact center environment and its voice or text messaging or emailing, you're ultimately looking at all of those different ways to drive those online portals, all those consumers back to the online portals for payments.
Mark Reinhard (05:50)
Yeah, it's more than that, just that. And this is where it gets into more of the AI stuff because there's so much, everyone can send emails, can send texts, but what are you doing with that data? And you and I speak all the time about like really the agencies have access to some of the tools. It's how they're utilizing it. What is their strategy? How are they analyzing and going after the business that is going to be, is going to pay off better and that is one you got to have data, two you got to look at data and three you got to analyze your data and that analyze and then now with AI the next step is suggest.
Analyzing used to be people would have, you know, back in the day, they'd go into someone's office or be stacks of papers all over the, then it's, you know, Excel and models and all this. And now it's like, just talk to your computer and say, I've got all this data, go tell me what's working and go make a recommendation as to what is going to work in the future. And that's, it's literally been all moving to, it's going to be moving for a long time, but it's moving fast right now.
So the more data we have – before it was, we'd have data about emailing and maybe texting if we're working with them and payments. Now we're tying the full CRM systems together. So we've got notes from CRMs. We've got call history. You know, what's the best time, date, whatever to contact these people and then make a recommendation, build campaigns, strategize. It's just become the sky's the limit as far as, you know, sort of, and it becomes that. It's always been about strategy. Now you have these awesome tools to really help you with your strategy.
Adam Parks (07:23)
And so as you're running these strategies and as we're starting to build these new and interesting campaigns, obviously the compliance question comes to the forefront. We're going to let the bot go do the things. And now we're concerned about, you know, what does that mean from a compliance standpoint? And so if I heard you correctly, that's one of the things that you're focused on here in this merger is actually that ability to increase the capabilities of your automated compliance structure.
Mark Reinhard (07:51)
Yeah, and I mean the capabilities have really always been there, but at least once again coming from our system and I'm speaking mostly about texting into a more, a system that's more focused on compliance and has more options is, you know, there's tons of stuff with time zones and state regulations. And we've had our system so that it can be set up and configured.
There's this more, no software system that plugs into other systems is exactly plug and play, but there's this more out of the box. I say there's, well, we're all, we're all one now. So ours has become, we now have much more, so many more options really to be compliant
and to help companies, especially the larger companies that are really focused on that. They want to play conservatively, want to fit in these certain windows of time. In the past, it's been, well, just send during the safe hours. Now it's like, send everything and the system will figure it out for you. And think about how much more flexibility that gives you.
Adam Parks (08:46)
It's definitely more from a flexibility standpoint. And now I'm thinking about kind of the, where do we start putting those guardrails around those communications, whether that be from a campaign level or even an individual account level, which I know was always configurable from your systems. But how do you start looking at these data sources across what may have been previously siloed data structures to kind of bring that together to drive those next steps?
Mark Reinhard (09:13)
The key is always is to have access to the data at some point. So a lot of, a lot of what we've done in the past, what Concepts2Code has done in the past and what Dial Connections in the past is had these deep integrations into the CRM. So, you know, the old days of uploading files and you have this limited data set is, is sort of a thing in the past. Like some, some CRMs still need to do that. But the true tie into the data is you got to have the data to make the analysis.
So deep integrations into the underlying CRM so you can pull out the data even if you're not the person doing it. For instance, Concepts2Code previously has never had a call center platform. Now we do. But previously, that data about calls, the number of calls, the number of attempts, if you're not factoring that into your email and your texting campaign, then you're missing out on some strategical benefits.
Getting the data into your system, even if you're not the one providing it, is key. So integration of all components of the system is a big part of it. And then once you've got it, the AI is helping so much to analyze and to make recommendations.
Adam Parks (10:18)
So over time, we've started to shift as an industry from the static predictive models to more behavioral engagement driven models. And you're bringing together this data set in order to kind of make some of those decisions. How has the campaign strategies evolved from the time when we were getting the straight batch uploads to these more, let's call it event-centric triggered journeys?
Mark Reinhard (10:43)
Well, I mean, one of the notable things and I don't know if it's changed, but I think more people are accepting it. It's always sort of been a good idea, but now it's less work is more real time follow up. So for instance, someone goes to your payment portal and then browses around and doesn't make a payment.
Well, you've always kind of known that from if you chose to run a report or, know, whatever someone's looking at it, you know, at the end of the week or whatever, how many people logged in.
But now it's much more possible and it has been for a while, but I said like tying things together is the key to make this possible is you can have automation follow up on that. So, you know, someone logs in, does some activity on the web within 15 minutes, 30 minutes, send them a follow up email, you know, and it's up to you to sort of determine what that strategy is, what that timeline is, but you can do different things. You can link different things. There's less manual work. So that's a key part of one linking things together.
But then two, you're going to have so much more AI kind of analyzing this data in the in the future. And basically now you're just plugging it in. And we're not to the point where it's actually sending things, but it's making recommendations. So here's people that logged in and we basically build, we can have the capacity to build campaigns for people. It's kind of on them again, a lot of compliance still goes into that.
They get to make the final decision. I want, do we want this to send? But even that as companies get more comfortable down the line with just saying, okay, we're going to let AI make some decisions and actually not need to approve it afterwards. And that's a company decision entirely. So we're going to bring them the technology and then it's up to them to figure out if they want a person reviewing it first.
Adam Parks (12:20)
Well, it's interesting in terms of how closely that ties to the strategies that have already been proven in the e-commerce world. And I know that you and I have talked about it on both webinars and podcasts that this industry becomes an e-commerce focused business in the next, I used to say 10 years, I think we're on the seven year path now, because you can feel it getting closer every year.
But being able to event trigger that email to go out after somebody has visited the portal, taken some actions is how we start moving more towards that behavioral driven communications. I think that's the future of the consumer journey personally, because the consumer is ultimately looking for some sort of a resolution. They're going through this. If they went to the portal and were- same as going to Amazon and leaving something in your cart and then moving, right? You get busy, you do something else and now you're starting to get those messages. You're seeing those products on social media in your advertisements.
I feel like that kind of e-commerce ecosystem is the direction that we're headed in. But as you mentioned, maybe we're not quite there yet for the AI to make all of those decisions. And it's about our ability to start not necessarily predicting, but being prepared to put those communications out in a campaign driven format and then measuring the metrics and results that we see based on those behaviors.
Mark Reinhard (13:43)
And I think we are, we are at the point where AI can make the decisions. think it's more compliance is saying, well, are we okay with making this decision? So the technology is always ahead of compliance and risk basis. I mean, but that has been for the history of time, always an issue with, with this industry is, is there's a lot of compliance and regulations and that holds people back. But now the technology is just exploding through it.
We're all moving faster and saying you got to figure out a way, you what do you want to do? And here's a bunch of options. So it's still going to be the case. All right, the lights out there keep going on and on. It's always going to be the case where, you know, the marketing, other places like Amazon, can send you whatever they want. They can send you 10 emails a day about all their good products. And, you know, they can probably call you if they wanted. We can't do that in our industry. So the same technology is here, but it's wrapped around these controls and these guardrails. And we're slowly moving as are the laws in the right direction. I believe, you know, we're using different channels we didn't even use to text. Like, why not? Everyone uses texting.
And you know, there was days where we didn't even email and then was Reg F kind of paved the path for that. There was a huge surge after Reg F and then following that became more text messaging. And that's just been the nature of it. And like I said, I don't think we're paying people on Facebook yet, but you know, Instagram or Pino pay your bill like is that the future? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. But if it's if that's where the future is, that's where we're going to be.
Adam Parks (15:09)
I don't disagree. The preference for communications by the consumer has been changing. I've seen, least through my conversations and the data that I've reviewed, the consumers seem to be more comfortable with contacting communication through the same form in which they originated the loan. If they originated a FinTech loan online, they're looking to communicate online. If they called into open a new credit card with the bank, then they probably want to be serviced over the phone. Right?
There seems to be a pretty strong correlation between how an account was originated and how the consumer ultimately wants to be serviced. Now, at the same time, we're dealing with a situation where data decays. And if I remember the study correctly, it's about 36% per year of your data is ultimately the value is decaying or the accuracy is decaying.
So it puts us in a difficult position to where as we build these channels, we need to make sure that we're fueling these communication channels with the right data sets, because sending out a lot of text messages can be really impactful, but sending them to the wrong people is not impactful and potentially more dangerous. So how do you see organizations improving their overall campaigns through the injection of, let's call it updated information throughout the life cycle?
Mark Reinhard (16:34)
So, I mean, it's a very good question and this comes down often to like skip tracing. So once again, take us back 20 years, you know, we just try to find as many phone numbers as we can for this person, we just call them all. And that's great. I mean, that was a strategy back then. Now it's find as many phone numbers as we can and which of the more likely ones let's focus on those.
And then when it comes down to emails and texts, well, you can call every number and ask if it's the right person. You generally don't text a number and ask if it's the right person. So you can get five cell phones from a customer. Should you then text the model validation to all five numbers? I'm not your lawyer, but I'm going to say no. So you've got to think about your data.
It's not just having as many contacts as possible. It's the quality of those contacts and the likelihood that that is the person and that's the campaign. So maybe you do want to text Sofi, but you don't want to put any sensitive information. But if you've got a cell phone number that came directly from a consumer's application nine months ago, there's a completely reasonable expectation that that is the current number and you can it's safer to do.
So it's all a balance of your data is not about volume. It's about quality of what's in there. And I think there's a lot more thought going into that now. The same thing goes for emails. You've got a, you know, you get a bunch of emails for a person because they had one at college. They had, you know, the Yahoo one, a Gmail one, and whatever, some disposable ones. Well, odds are if you're 100% sure they were that person, they're not, they don't belong to someone else.
But odds are everything with the name John Smith does not belong to a single John Smith. So there is, you've got to take caution, you got to be cautious about the data you have and the more context you have for someone, the less likely it is that they are all accurate. And that's really just a big part of it. You know, it used to be get all the numbers, call all the numbers and now it's get what you can. What's the quality of it? And based on your level of confidence of the data, your strategy should be based around that.
Adam Parks (18:29)
I'm hearing kind of two different pieces here. One piece is that predictive modeling. I have all these phone numbers trying to predict which is the right phone number based on whatever attributes I have available to me. So let's call it modernized or automated skip tracing to some level, but that prioritization of effort.
On the flip side, we have the behavioral stuff, which is those specific behaviors that are triggering some sort of a next action. And it sounds like when you start putting those two things together, we get a much more holistic view of that consumer and an increased likelihood of a payment. Are you seeing kind of an intersection between that predictive, improving the predictive nature of that data and the actual behavioral triggering or is one more valuable than the other?
Mark Reinhard (19:24)
Um, no, I mean, in this business, nothing's more valuable than anything else. They're all just different, different angles at it. And we're always trying, you know, a 5% improvement in, in, your process is a 5% improvement in revenue. That's significant. So it's really everything moving together. What we do try for is, and you're saying more of the event driven stuff. If you've got an email address, again, that's just an easy one to give an example to.
And someone comes to your website and puts a payment on that account and you have three emails, when they're paying, they're going to put in an email address for the receipt to go to or the, you know, thanks for your payment email or whatever. Well, the consumer just supplied that for you. Ignore the other ones, you know, that's, that's like a 100% certainty or 99. whatever that that is the correct email.
So you're fine tuning your data set as things go through, just like when you call a bad number, you remove it from your list. But now some of that can be, it's much more automated ⁓ because people are providing data. And the other thing that comes into play is people are so used to, and it's a good thing, providing their data when they're on your portal, when they're visiting your site. So when someone comes to our site, we ask them for their email address because we have to be able to know we can contact them in some way.
And based on other information, if they provide nothing else, then generally we'll make...let them make a payment if they are willing to verify some other information. We'll let them see their whole account and multiple accounts and documents and all the things that you should have access to. But it's up to them. How much do they want to absolutely I just want to go in and take a payment and provide this. And that is data that's changed over the years. More and more people just want to make fast payments. They don't even care. They're just so used to it. And time is everything.
But we also ask them for a cell phone number when they hey do you mind if we text you we can communicate with you through text. And if they provide a number that matches what we have on file, fantastic. If they provide a different number, they've provided that plus given consent. That is the number one, the number one thing to follow up with or the phone number to follow up with.
So your data is growing because customers are supplying it and anything the customer supplies is more valuable and it's telling you they're okay with you communicating that way. So someone gives you an email and so or someone gives you a text message and you're not using that you're doing something wrong.
Adam Parks (21:37)
So where's the prioritization of these pieces? So we learn about all of these new pieces. We collect a new cell phone number. We collect a new email address. We're looking at the time in which each one of those pieces of data has been collected. Is that something that lives on the orchestration side? Is that something that should be driven by what's existing in the CRM and kind of who becomes the owner of campaign strategy as you start building more layers?
Mark Reinhard (22:05)
It's a good question. It really does come down. ⁓ I mean, you need a higher level. It's generally not the standard collector or strategizing campaigns. know, someone who understands the data and maybe even understands the client. Like this client always gives us good cell phone numbers. This client always gives us good emails.
This client doesn't give us anything, maybe we need to go talk to that client about them providing more stuff. So there's got to be that bigger picture person and whether that's management or a data analyst or whatever.
Good news is the work is becoming less and less. You you can have tools that will look in and analyze your data, but more importantly, analyze your past performance. know, this client, we used to know this client, we collect this percent. Now it's like this client gives us emails and those are, we collect this percent. But when we use text messages, we collect this percent and you can tune that. ⁓
Mark Reinhard (23:01)
Yeah, absolutely. And you can build separate campaigns for different, based, based on these ideas and these strategies.
Adam Parks (23:07)
But who in the process actually becomes responsible for it? Does that come down to the client level and the clients assigning resources internally, like operational resources to manage that? I know your interfaces don't necessarily require, once the rails are set up, a technology specialist to go in and do it, right? It is a little bit more operations driven. Or is that a collaborative effort between you and the client, or is that more of a per engagement decision?
Mark Reinhard (23:22)
Yeah, absolutely. So it's generally, they're going to make the ultimate decision because we are not a collection agency, but we're often advising people. And what I say all the time is, why aren't you doing this and why aren't you doing that? And they don't. And a lot of times just, we didn't think of that or we didn't think of that. And you and I know we've been to these conferences and stuff.
One of the great things about our industry is people are willing to share ideas and talk about these things. Like they're not your collection strategy. Maybe the nitty gritty is your trade secret, but you're generally strategies is hey when this happens we do this or when we get this data we do this or we like to email first and then call and then text but we like to text and then go in the opposite order or whatever it is like generally people aren't keeping those closely guarded secrets so we're often giving people advice but a lot of our advice is really just like what we see the most often we say well most agencies of your size or with this type of debt here's what they are doing and then you know we're not there to make the final decision for them.
Obviously that's part of what they're doing, but it is collaborative, especially when we're getting them going or if we're bringing in new technology to sell. So if you weren't texting yesterday and now you're with us and you're texting, you kind of don't know what you don't know. So we're often giving a lot of advice, but our main advice is always look at how it's going and tweak it based on that. Nothing is the old term, set it and forget it.
That's not reality for any sort of strategy. Maybe AI, a little bit is going to tweak your strategy for you. We're not quite there yet but we still need people involved in the business. So it's operations, but it's often guided by other people.
Adam Parks (25:11)
I don't think that'll ever change. I think artificial intelligence will be a great tool that allows us to do some really incredible things. But if the whole thing can be done by AI, then why would the creditors use third parties? I think it's that personal touch. It's that second voice. There's a lot of different aspects that I think still are going to require that human in the loop, that human touch as we look at artificial intelligence for our space.
Now, one of the things that we've talked about a few times and I think is really interesting is the self-service aspect of that collection industry. And as I was saying before, that I believe consumers want to be serviced or generally want to be serviced using similar channels to the way in which they originated the loan, which means that more modern consumers that are doing most of their borrowing in their financial life exists from their cell phone.
As collection agencies or as debt collection companies, we really need to meet them where they are. We need our portals to be mobile friendly. We need them to be able to get in there, get information, accept a payment at two o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. But beyond that, actually empower the consumer to understand the information related to the account, whether that's including documentation, statements, applications, whatever we're receiving from the creditor when we're working those accounts.
A few data points in terms of how things have evolved from a self-service perspective. More than 98% of debt collection organizations now offer at least one self-service capability. I thought that was a pretty telling number, 98%. I don't know what's going on with the other 2%, but I I don't know how they're doing it with no self-service.
Mark Reinhard (26:50)
I don't know either. I don't know how they're in business.
Adam Parks (26:56)
90% of those allow recurring auto pay set up via the self service. So that ability to set up those recurring payments, not necessarily a negotiator, but the ability to set up those recurring payments. 87% allow consumers to establish payment plans digitally. Clearly negotiation and payment plan options and presentation is something that has significantly increased.
64% use a website or virtual portal negotiators, which was a 35% point increase year over year. I thought that was interesting that that saturation is starting to come. again, if you, I don't know why we wouldn't be taking payments through an online portal if you're trying to connect with consumers and 27% receive more than 40% of their payments through online portals.
Clearly for those that are actively using these digital communication strategies and moving those consumers towards those self-service options are having a significant impact on their ability to collect debt. Conversely, if we start looking at conversational AI payments, it increased, although 89% of users still don't collect payments through that conversational channel. That one seems to be the self-service channel that's lagging behind the most.
There's some pretty dramatic figures as we talk about how companies have started to adopt this technology as someone who's been doing this now for as long as anybody from a self-service standpoint. Have you felt like that increase or the velocity of increase has been greater over the last, let's call it three or four years as compared to maybe the 10 years before that? Or what have you seen in terms of the adoption of self-service technology?
Mark Reinhard (28:45)
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Like the concept of self-serving is really just, know, consumer is never going to use that term self-serve, but that's exactly what they're doing. They go to a website, they expect to be able to take care of things. Number one, quickly, and number two, with no complexity. And then three, they want visibility into things.
So providing visibility gives the consumer more sort of a sense of control. And it's very frustrating to go pay a bill and you just click a link and it just says put in your credit card. You're like, well, don't know. It doesn't even say what my balance is like. That's horrible. Or in our world, you've got three accounts. Which one am I paying on? But being able to provide all that information and then our industry is very unique. You know, you go to Amazon and you buy something for 100 bucks. It's 100 bucks. When you go when you go a collection agency, 100 bucks.
It's you know, $10 a month for 10 months or, you know, hey, can you resolve this quicker? We'll give you a discount that you can buy these offers. This is very unique to collections. So showing people those options upfront and then letting them choose. if you're maybe you're doing a settlement, we can discount this up to 40%, but you got to make your payment today. Oh, you can't pay 60 bucks today. Well, no problem. You get there's still options to pay over time. So there's something for everybody.
And then tying in all these things, really what's driven, portals is not just the portals have gotten better and you know, portals like ours have a bunch of different options, but is driving people there. And so there's that focus on, we're going to text people a link to the portal. And when they click that link, it's unique. They're going to get there. That's going to know who they am. They're going to say, here are your settlement offers or here's your offers. Pay today, pay in three months, pay in 12 months.
Whatever you want them to be and those can be driven by your clients. They can be driven by the balance. They can be driven by any rule you want. And it's just the ease of doing that. So drive people there. They're going to come there. You know when you don't have collectors available to take calls people don't want to make these calls. And it really comes down to that.
It's the portals themselves are offering it, but the convenience of getting to the portals has really been where a lot of the communication focuses. I think that helps tremendously. And that's why emails and texting are so important. But it's also important what you speak to is the follow up. So at the end of a call, there's an event right there. You wrapped up a call, a positive call, but you didn't take all the payment or you didn't take a payment at all.
Event happens. Follow up with an email. Thanks for your call today. We're happy to help, happy to assist, here's our portal, we'll reach out to you again, whatever you wanted to say, like tie all these things together. So that person may have called in, their next payment is going to come on.
Adam Parks (31:29)
Well, we're sending out text messages, emails and other digital communications. The purpose of, we have to move the consumer somewhere to accept that payment. We can't accept a payment directly through email. We're not sending credit card credentials back and forth. We're not doing the same thing with text messaging. And although maybe RCS is the, you know, in the future, we'll have some other options.
But today, if we're building a texting campaign, I have to try and send the consumer somewhere with the least amount of friction to actually communicate the offer. Otherwise, I got their attention and I'm just dropping it on the floor. I have to be able to carry it through to some sort of self-service technology or prompt them to be calling in. But a consumer who originated alone online doesn't want to talk to us. They don't want to call in when they got a text message. They want to go to a portal. They want to self-serve. They may not call it that, but that's what they want.
Mark Reinhard (32:20)
Yeah, I don't know if I'm sure some people want to call. Most people don't want to call. When I call a company, especially about a bill, it's only because there's a I couldn't do it online. Like I can't imagine wanting to call someone and thinking that that was the best use of my time and then even worse than playing some hold music where I can't even focus on anything else. It's just like calling is a truly awful experience if you're not going, you know, peer to peer. Adam, I'll call you, you answer the phone. We have a great time talking. Calling a business sucks these days. It's just the reality of it. And then calling to give payment for something that's two years old is just not generally incentivizing.
But clicking a link, I can finally get this balance resolved. Look at this. Look at these options. You know, I'm not getting harassed. You know, or they nagged, guess, like two in the morning, you know, Christmas Day. A long, long time ago when we were much smaller, I would go through all our clients and like look at who's collecting on Christmas Day and New Year's Day and would send them little pigs. Hey, we made some money today. Now we're too big for me to go into all our customers. But I still love that thought is like you'd be surprised when people are paying.
Adam Parks (33:31)
Yeah. Well, they get some Christmas money. They got a gift, right? Grandma sent them 50 bucks and now they're trying to get these things done, which I think also points to the fact that consumers do ultimately want to resolve the debt in a lot of instances. And it's just about finding that right communication at the right time.
Now, these digital communications, the self-service behavior has to improve our ability to understand and track those behaviors and select the specific triggers going forward. We've talked about the abandoned cart email where they go to the portal, they don't make that payment. It could be a change in the offers over time if they haven't received the communication.
Do you think that the application of artificial intelligence to this consumer journey in the future will be more about the actual content behind the messaging versus just trying to predict what they are going to do next or which will be the responded to communication.
Mark Reinhard (34:35)
Yeah, and I mean, it already is like we're getting recommendations from AI about what to put and and unfortunately, this always falls back on compliance is that it would be much better if you put in two friendly lines and nothing legal or anything. And unfortunately, it's not always the option. I'm talking about like an email as an example or, or, you know, you must say this is an attempt to collect a debt.
Well, no one thinks that's a great thing to put in, but you got to put it in certain places. AI can know this, but you can't always if you just say what is the best method to get someone, which a marketing company would do is not quite, we still have these constraints, we got to let AI know about these constraints and then make the recommendations. yes, content has been suggested and will continue to be suggested by AI. Unfortunately, we're still limited as in all things by what we are allowed to do or what our customers are allowed to do.
Adam Parks (35:33)
I think compliance is still the checkbox that everything has to go through. And I've talked with AI first and digital first organizations that have talked to me about like that being the largest bottleneck is the fact that they still have to approve all of the email templates manually before they can be sent.
And we've had, I've had conversations with groups that talk about the judge LLMs and you know, this model is watching that model is watching the other model. It feels all, you know, very cloak and dagger spy to me and, in the eye in the sky is watching us all. But as we think about how that, how those communications are coming together, reporting has to be changing.
And as we think about how reporting is changing, have you looked at any strategies for improving the understanding as you're starting to pile all this data together, but now you're going to have to kind of reorganize the way that you're drawing actionable insights from the growing pile of raw data that you're working with. How has that had an impact on your reporting structures or even your approach to reporting in general?
Mark Reinhard (36:43)
So yeah, I mean, it definitely, like I said, sort of at the beginning, the more data you have, the better. Different agencies have different data or, you know, they store it different ways. we're, that's a moving target. It's always a moving target, but the key is the analysis of that data. And it is those, what are your communication mechanisms? How are you tying it together? And it's not always like you say reporting and I think more of like campaign building, like, yes, a report, like how did this do?
But the next step is how do you build your next campaign based on that data? So the report's almost like no one's reading the report unless it's just a very high level, whatever. But when you're building strategies, you're saying, find out the things that work and like, let's build our campaigns on top of that.
So the reporting itself probably hasn't changed a ton, but the data that's available has. And then what's more important is the next level from the report. It's almost like you don't even think about the report. That's what's processed by the campaign building itself. So yes, data has changed a lot.
Adam Parks (37:39)
Interesting. I mean, have the focus KPIs evolved at all in terms of like, so we're not looking as much at like the raw data output reports, but we are looking at some specific KPIs and maybe a more dashboarded approach to understanding so that we can build our next campaigns because we can't look at all the raw data. We need some sort of analysis of it.
But are there any new KPIs that you've seen drive to the top of importance over the last 24 months?
Mark Reinhard (38:12)
It's a good question. I keep saying this. It's a good question. They're all good questions.
The one that I don't actually have a lot of the reports and the data that we're always asked for delivery, opens, clicks, whatever time of day, things like that. And that honestly hasn't changed a ton. Like these are still key metrics. I often go back and think, well, none of these metrics really matter. What matters is how many payments are you driving? And that is the most important one. But a lot of people are still looking at these are very much effective.
Like my job is to send three campaigns a day or start initiate or whatever it is. And then they want to know, that campaign effective? I'm going to change the subject line a little bit. Is that make an effect? and change the content a little. So there are people that are looking at like the campaign level summaries. but there's, I would say what we'll, what we are probably trying to focus on more is, is take the payments and work backwards because you figure out what works. So you've got one is how did this work?
And then two is, this did work, I got payments. Let's try to figure out where those came from because we called them. We texted with email them. Can you figure out where that came from? So that's something that we're we're trying to do more of with our customers is because we don't always have all that data. We were not the ones calling and maybe maybe we will be down the line but helping them analyze that data or getting the data into their system so that they can analyze it more.
Adam Parks (39:34)
So could the impact of the increased volume of data be not necessarily that we changed what we're looking at, but maybe we've increased the accuracy of what we are tracking? Because with more data, when we look at the averages, when we look at those behavioral patterns, we're going to see that across a larger sample size. So maybe we're seeing it as it's that data is allowing us to become more accurate using those same measurements. Is that a possibility?
Mark Reinhard (39:54)
I think so. Definitely. I mean, it definitely is. I think that the more noticeable things are, know, like you it's the real time nature of it. That is, you you send out a campaign at two and between two and four, you have a lot of activity and things like that. But you can see that you're not waiting till the next day to run a report. And I'm not saying anyone's technology was that legacy, but it really used to be the case. You would do something and then you would look at it.
Adam Parks (40:03)
Look, it was not that long ago that that was the case that everything processed overnight and then we'd see the results the following morning. So like, I don't want to, I realize maybe not your system, but I think there's more folks that still live in that world than, you know, would care to.
Mark Reinhard (40:29)
Yeah. And we will slow and speed things up sometimes based on feedback, you know, this is, this actually prompts and it's not so much that it matters if a thousand people go to your website in the same, at the same second, doesn't the website will handle it.
But if you, if you are getting any feedback or calls or, know, even if you get a small percentage of calls back generally, and you're closing at five on Friday, generally, you don't want to set a text campaign at, you know, 4:30 cause you're like, well, yes, people will come to the, to the website. That's great. But if those who do want to pay by phone, you know, you're thinking about the bigger picture.
And I'm not saying you never send campaigns when you're not open. No, of course you should and you should send them on the weekend and not your compliance guy, but don't miss out on these opportunities. But it's something to think about. This client, tend to get a lot of people going right to the web. This client, we tend to get a lot of people calling. So let's send those earlier.
Let's find the right time where they can call in and they're not missing us, and then circling all the way back to driving people to the payment portal. If you call your agency right now, go to your website, look at your 800 number, whatever it is, call it. And if the first thing it doesn't say after this is an attempt to collect a debt isn't, did you know you can access your account 24/7 and pay your bill online? Here is our website and spell it out slowly. If that's not the second thing after your disclosure.
Go fix it right now. Go today. Whatever you're doing, stop it and go change it. Because that person is getting a message because you're not open. Let them know they can still take care of the situation or get their questions answered or pay your bills.
Adam Parks (42:14)
That I think is a great action item for everybody in one kind of self assessing the situation of your own world, but understanding what that consumer experience is. Cause how infrequently do we go and Google our own collection agency company name and see what those results look like and how our website shows up and how trustworthy does our website and then our portal actually look from that consumer's perspective?
Because if it was built in 1998, it's not driving a lot of enthusiasm and digital trust. And the world of success in debt collection right now is closely tied to that digital trust, whether it be through sending those text messages and looking at those channels and the ability to brand outbound phone calls or outbound text messages and kind of drive some of that trust. I think that's a big part of what our future is going to look like.
And I suggest that every organization take a close look at that, right? Be your own consumer experience officer and go through the full process. Be an account in your system and constantly be monitoring and going through that process.
Mark Reinhard (43:25)
That's going to be our next webinar. On Saturday night, you and I are going to go to 20 random collection agencies. We're going to go to their website, see what it says. We're going to call them and we're going to text them and then we're going to come back. We'll anonymize all the data and we'll talk about what we found.
Adam Parks (43:27)
Okay. I think that's actually a great idea. I feel like that would be a, yeah. All right. I think that's our next session together, Mark.
Mark Reinhard (43:45)
We will leave all names but we will report back and it would almost be fun to hear because it's something we talk about with our customers. That's where the word strategy matters. Like this is part of your strategy. ⁓ It's not always just... It's not any little thing. It's the big picture.
Adam Parks (43:49)
I can't tell you how many times on stage at a conference I've done this. can pull out your phone right now and search your company name. What do you see? Go to your website. What do you see? Go to your portal. What do you see? And just people don't generally point out like, yeah, my website doesn't look right. But you can see their facial expressions change as they have their phones out. And they're kind of going through that experience because consumers pay when they feel like they trust.
And collection agencies, well, you're rarely the only one that that consumer owes money to. And so you're competing with the other collection agencies and they're going to pay the ones that they feel are the most trustworthy, are the most realistic and the safest in which to enter their payment information, which, you know, I remember the portals back in the day prior to people moving over and using more of a portal like yours with the authentication.
And some of those payment pages were brutal. I look, I built the websites for them. It was still difficult to talk to collection organizations about how they could be using digital payments and enabling that self-service technology. Cause it's only really been the last five years that it's become popular. I mean, that's 2020, right?
Mark Reinhard (45:17)
I know. And we, I mean, we're still, you know, we're still signing up customers where their portal is not really a portal. It's a payment page. ⁓ And it's just, it's how it's almost unimaginable that I would go to any company and just plug in a credit card without some, something else. Now if I got an email and directly linked me to it, okay that's one thing, but I'm generally not going to Google someone and then hit pay and then just put in an account number.
Adam Parks (45:47)
You don't feel like you've been authenticated, right? When you're going through actual authentication to enter a portal, I think it's building trust in both directions because they're now seeing the account information balance, cetera, things that they are more likely to recognize.
Mark Reinhard (46:03)
Yeah, and actually, I'll flip that in other directions. I don't know if the consumer actually cares about authentication. I feel they compare from the bigger picture, which is a sense of trust. So seeing information and yes, sometimes sometimes people and often people find the authentication to be a pain in the butt because you got to, do this and set up a password and I don't want to do that.
So that's what I'm saying. They don't always care that it's authenticating who they are, but they care that they're getting it to the right place. So if you go to a page and just like put in your account number and your credit card number and that's it, it's like, if I made a typo, is this the right account number? Is this even the right place?
But if it's okay, we verified your name and we found your account and we can, you know, and sometimes you can do that where we found an account matching and star, star, star, star and you're not disclosing information but part of it. That's really important to them and they're not thinking about it so much as you know this is secure, hopefully it's secure, whatever you're using, but they're thinking of is this actually the place that I think it is and am I actually paying on the account? I think I am, especially if you have multiple accounts.
Adam Parks (47:06)
Now for an organization, let's call it a smaller debt buyer or a smaller debt collection agency who's starting to go down this digital path and they've been a traditional agency for since their founding, what would you tell them is the first couple of steps on a journey of a thousand miles?
Mark Reinhard (47:27)
It really depends where you are. As you said at beginning, 98% or something have portals.
Adam Parks (47:34)
Have some sort of self-service technology available, right? Kind of broadly.
Mark Reinhard (47:37)
I would, I think that's the easiest thing to fix. Like if you don't have an actual portal and it's just a payment site, get that, get a better system there because everything else is about driving it there. So get the site that matters. Get the portal that matters. Come visit us if you're looking. But and then drive people there.
And then what I will tell you with absolute certainty is our business has been doing portals and emails and texting for years and years and years. The percentage of our business that is texting is increasing more rapidly than anything else. So that piece of the pie is growing like that is considered to be the most effective means for digitally that we're seeing right now. So I would go after texting next and then emails. And then the key is really driving the people there and then be able to respond. And as we said before, visit your own website, Google your own company, do all of the above. Reputation matters online.
Adam Parks (48:33)
Mark, I learn something from every conversation that I have with you. I really do appreciate you coming on today, sharing your insights, talking with me about prediction and behavior and the balance between these worlds. I think debt collection is continuing to evolve. Clearly some of the stats we shared today demonstrate that on an industry-wide basis.
But it's always great to talk to someone who's got their boots on the ground, is actively involved in building the tools that drive these types of camp.
Mark Reinhard (49:03)
Cool, that was a great time. And like I said, we've got our next webinar geared up and ready to go. So always fun, I appreciate the time.
Adam Parks (49:10)
Well, for those of you...I appreciate the insights and for everybody watching, we appreciate your time and attention as well. If you have additional questions you'd like to ask Mark or myself, you can leave those in the comments here on LinkedIn or on the replay on YouTube. And we'll be responding to those.
Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss, like our next planned episode, you can leave those in the comments below as well. And I'm sure I'll get Mark back here at least one more time, helping me create great content for a great industry. But until next time, Mark, thank you so much. And thank you everybody for watching. We'll see you all again soon. Bye.
Mark Reinhard (49:41)
Thank you.
