Automatic Interactions and Mass Communication in EasyCall’s Offer 

At this year’s ACCD conference, we discussed the issues of automation and automatic interactions as a crucial element of building operational strategies related to customer contact in areas such as customer service, sales, and debt collection. 

EasyCall was a silver partner at this year’s ACCD conference. Our presentation, conducted by Piotr Ziobro (Business Development Manager), focused on the potential benefits of using automation to carry out tasks related to customer contact. This is particularly important in the context of changing market conditions and the challenge of maintaining adequate staffing levels in call/contact centers. Our main aim was to address why it is worthwhile and necessary to automate customer contacts. Automation primarily allows for the independence of process execution from available staffing resources and significantly reduces operational costs while enabling a much larger scale of activities. We successfully implement automation and mass customer interactions in customer service, sales, and debt collection, significantly increasing outreach effectiveness. By automating repetitive processes and conducting automatic interactions with customers, we substantially reduce our dependence on the number of available human resources, redirecting available consultants to those actions and processes where human skills are irreplaceable or potentially more profitable, such as complex debt collection or sales negotiations. 

During the presentation, we attempted to define the concept of automation, which has a very broad understanding, likely depending on the problem it solves. In our view, the concept of automation can be defined as “the replacement of processes previously carried out manually with telecommunication tools or systems.” Therefore, it does not matter whether we are talking about simple solutions or processes or very advanced tools and complex interactions. In each of these cases, we can speak of process and task automation when a telecommunication system performs a specific interaction, thus replacing human labor. 

A good example of conducting automatic interactions with customers is the automation of receivables monitoring or early debt collection, where the automatic process offers many possibilities, including: accepting payment declarations from a voice message directed to the customer, reading the debt balance using speech synthesis, and utilizing voicemail detection and speech recognition to conduct interactions. Particularly for debt collection activities, solutions are needed that enable contact despite the worsening quality of available phone numbers and the increasing awareness of debtors on how to avoid contact with creditors. Other popular automation implementations include interactive surveys, opinion polls, and verification of acquired sales leads. 

To effectively communicate with customers, it is necessary to reach them with our message in a time and form tailored to their expectations and technological capabilities. It should be noted that the popularity of tools enabling mass interactions, not just notifications, is currently increasing. Conducting interactions is possible, for example, with the help of: return text messages (2Way SMS), interactive voice messages (VMS with IVR), or emails. VMS with IVR is also known as a chatbot or virtual agent, especially when enriched with speech recognition. Modern multi-channel communication tools allow for automatic interactions at a convenient place and time for the customer. 

In our opinion, the main reasons for abandoning manual tasks in a call/contact center in favor of automation are: 

• Process optimization in terms of task execution speed 
• Process optimization in decision-making 
• Elimination of weak points and human errors 
• Cost and staffing resource optimization 
• Increased outreach effectiveness 
• Increased scale of activities 

For companies conducting direct marketing activities, not necessarily having a call/contact center, automation and mass campaigns enable a significant increase in outreach effectiveness and the scale of activities, such as sending offers and conducting marketing campaigns. 

From our experience, process automation using mass customer communication tools and with the help of bots or interactive IVR schemes embedded in voice messages is mainly applicable in the following areas: 

1. Customer service automation, including payment monitoring 
2. Debt collection automation 
3. Mass multi-channel campaigns – promotional and marketing 
4. Automatic surveys and knowledge polls 
5. Sales lead verification 
6. Verification of marketing and debt collection databases 

Exceptionally wide applications of mass multi-channel automatic campaigns can be found in the areas of debt collection and payment monitoring to carry out the following processes: 

• Pre-collection – e.g., sending information containing reminders of the upcoming due date and payment amount (SMS, VMS with IVR, bots) 
• Soft debt collection – informing about the debt amount and due date. The system will accept the payment obligation declaration (automatically or by connecting to a consultant from the embedded DTMF menu) – some clients will call back the number from which we run the campaign 
• Hard early-stage debt collection – we can repeat the campaigns until at least part of the message is heard – important for people avoiding contact. Additionally, we can use mobile number rotation when making the call (VMS with IVR along with voicemail detection triggering campaign repetition) 

The most important aspect, however, is the results of implementing automation. By carrying out mass multi-channel campaigns for our clients, we achieve an over 30% increase in outreach effectiveness. In 20% of cases, recipients of voice messages call back despite not answering the call. Voicemail detection followed by a subsequent contact attempt results in another several percent increase in outreach effectiveness. 

During the EasyCall presentation, we introduced two solutions related to mass communication that allow automating mass communication processes, including those involving interactive feedback handling (bot, virtual assistant). These are the Multi-Channel Campaign Platform and the Customer Contact Automation Platform, which have very extensive functionality enabling the creation of complex campaigns using a drag & drop graphical interface. 

MULTI-CHANNEL MASS CAMPAIGN PLATFORM (SMS/VMS) allows the preparation of mass voice message (VMS) and text message (SMS) campaigns, as well as multi-stage combined VMS with SMS campaigns, and their implementation according to a predefined scenario (dial plan). The platform’s capabilities are described in detail on our website https://easycall.pl/dla-call-center/kampanie-laczone-vms-sms/. The main advantages of our solution include the ability to conduct multi-stage campaigns using various forms of communication (SMS/VMS). 

CUSTOMER CONTACT AUTOMATION PLATFORM enables the preparation of campaigns that execute complex interactive feedback handling schemes using voice messages with an embedded multi-element interaction process. Elements such as voice announcements, DTMF menus, speech recognition, data retrieval from external systems, conditional voice announcements, and voicemail detection are used to build interaction schemes with customers executed by the platform. Below is an example of an automatic campaign scheme prepared using the intuitive drag & drop campaign creator. 

Basic information about the Customer Contact Automation Platform provided by EasyCall: 

• Intuitive drag & drop creator 
• Simple and clear menu 
• Speech synthesis built into voice announcements 
• Voicemail detection, which can be used as a condition for campaign repetition or execution of another specific interaction scheme (campaign scenario) 
• Ability to create both simple and very complex processes connected with data exchange with external systems 
• No need to involve IT resources to launch the campaign 

We invite you to contact us directly to receive the full version of our ACCD presentation. We will also be happy to present the potential benefits of implementing automation and mass communication in your company. 

Website dedicated to customer contact automation 

Piotr Mazurkiewicz  

Board Member