For debt collection contact centres, there is probably no metric as important as promise to pay.
It indicates a commitment from the customer to pay for products/services that have been delivered or are intended for delivery, essential for revenue generation at an organisation. A high promise to pay metric is extremely important, as it signals an organisation’s capacity to extract payments which is due. Before we delve into the various methods of improving promise to pay, let us first understand the metric in greater detail.
What is Promise to Pay?
You can define promise to pay as an outbound contact centre metric that denotes how many of the total outbound calls resulted in a verbal agreement to make a payment that is overdue. In several cases, this agreement can be understood as legally binding, as there is a clear exchange of products/services in lieu of payment.
Promise to pay is measured by various types of outbound contact centres around the world. Banks and insurance service providers, B2B sellers working with small business, subscription-based direct to customer service providers, etc. must all extract payment from their customers on a regular basis. While a lot of these regularised payments are now automated, promise to pay remains a vital metric for scenarios where an automated payment has malfunctioned or the amount cannot be automatically deducted from the client’s account for some reason.
The formula for calculating your promise to pay rate is as follows:
(Number of outbound calls that resulted in a promise to pay ÷ total number of right party contacts made during the period) x 100
Note: Promise to pay is calculated in relation to right party contacts, which is when the outbound agent actually manages to reach a decision-maker or a customer-side stakeholder authorised to approve the payment.
Tips for Improving Promise to Pay
There are several ways you can maximise the number of commitments to pay collected by your contact centre.