Financial pressures on consumers are continuing to make life difficult for many households. According to the Money Charity, average total debt per UK household was £65,665 in August 2024. Some individuals are experiencing the debt collection process for the first time as they struggle to meet their obligations. It’s logical to plan for the resulting impact on capacity in your collections department and how you will cope with a sustained increase in demand.

Recruit

It may be the right decision to grow your collections personnel before you become overextended and customer support levels suffer. Investing in new team members who can hopefully commit to years of service, secures your team for the future.  However, this is an expensive option and one that takes time and resources. You may not see the full benefits in time to solve your current capacity issues. 

It’s also the case that quality collections advisors are in short supply, hard to acquire and retain. With employment levels relatively high, the number of potential trainees has dwindled. If you can recruit successfully, you may be left with excess capacity in the long term, having invested in training and resources for the expanded workforce.

Outsource

Outsourcing makes sense if you want to limit the time and cost burden of recruiting extra staff. It quickly relieves capacity pressures; however, outsourcing inevitably means losing some control over customer experience. It can be unpopular with customers, potentially upsetting the longer-term creditor/customer relationship. 

Outsourcing is convenient if you can find the right agency for your needs, but it comes at a cost, which may be hard to sell internally if your organisation is looking to control costs.

Automate

If you prefer to keep control and manage fluctuating demand in-house, automation is the logical first consideration. Modern technology can deliver results quickly and cost-effectively, and the business's immediate needs can be met promptly. 

For example, digital self-service can take over reminders, payments, arrangements, affordability assessments and more. It immediately transforms contact centre capacity and can flex to meet any level of demand. It frees your team to focus where their specialist skills and human touch are most needed. Self-service has a positive effect on customer service metrics like first call resolution and call-waiting times. In addition, the costs of a digital solution are kept in proportion to functionality and usage. 

In addition to self-service, core collections systems can automate customer communications, segmentation and risk scoring, the triggering of dynamic workflows and predictive analytics. It can use data to enrich customer profiles and business decisions, and enhance compliance management and reporting using a audit log of all events.

Conclusion: quick and cost-effective solutions to boost capacity

Managing capacity is a delicate balancing act between expensive overcapacity and overstretched staff who can’t meet customers' needs. Fortunately, there is a third route that avoids both of these pitfalls and is the first choice before launching a recruitment drive or paying for outsourcing.

Scaling a collections operation quickly and cost-effectively is achievable with the right product and an agile supplier. The effort can focus on those parts of the collections process where gains are immediate, such as digital customer self-service or to augment existing system shortfalls where time savings will be most effective. The choice is yours. 

Talk to our team about your options and discover the quick gains you can make, regardless of your underlying technology.