The problem
Call abandonment stood at 23.4%, pushing customers into branches and making the branch network the bank's most expensive service channel. Collections recovered only 42% in the 1-30 day bucket against a ~60% market benchmark, using manual dialling and spreadsheets. Regulatory reporting consumed around 900 person-hours monthly. Building in-house would have breached the bank's cost-to-income ratio.
What we did
- Sized capacity against interval-level volume and stood up a workforce-management function
- Segmented collections by balance, delinquency age, product and contact history
- Moved collections from manual dialling to a designed multichannel contact strategy
- Automated the compilation and reconciliation steps of the supervisory reporting cycle
Results
Call abandonment fell from 23.4% to 3.8% by month 12, service-only branch visits dropped 22%, and 1-30 day collections recovery rose from 42% to 61%, reaching the market benchmark. Regulatory reporting effort fell from about 900 to 210 person-hours monthly, with the released capacity redeployed to analysis. Governance from the Toronto parent and a documented Ley 172-13 position satisfied a risk committee that had blocked two prior proposals.
Metrics
Before and after
- Call abandonment rate-84%
- Before23.4%After3.8%
- Average speed of answer-85%
- Before4 min 12 sAfter38 s
- Recovery, 1-30 day bucket+19 pts
- Before42%After61%
- Regulatory reporting effort-77%
- Before900 hrs/moAfter210 hrs/mo
- Contact-centre satisfaction
- 3.4 / 5 → 4.4 / 5 (+1.0)
These metrics are shown as text only, because the client did not provide a comparable starting figure.
Bars compare the starting position with the measured result. Each row is scaled separately because the units are not the same.
Figures relate to the period stated and were provided by the client. They depend on that client's starting point, so they are not a forecast for another operation.
The Toronto governance is what unlocked it. Our risk committee had blocked outsourcing collections twice. An audited control environment and a real data-protection position changed the conversation from whether to how.
What stayed in place
Collections segmentation and the multichannel contact strategy gave the bank a usable collections data asset for the first time, and the automated reporting process is now a permanent part of the supervisory cycle.