How SAFCO Tripled Its Right Party Contact Rate to Achieve a 70% Kept Rate
Challenge
SAFCO (Southern Auto Finance Company, LLC) wanted to improve its Right Party Contact (RPC) rate to engage customers in a two-way conversation that would enhance its collections strategy.
Implementation
After evaluating several SMS providers, SAFCO selected Solutions by Text to expand their customer engagement through the text channel. This included implementing SBT’s compliant-focused SMS subscription, two-way text capabilities, dedicated short code, and SmartURL.
Results
70%
kept rate with text
10%
higher kept rate than SAFCO’s combined rate across all contact channels
0.5%
opt-out rate
Benefits
Enriched the Customer Relationship Through Two-Way Text
“Customers are so receptive to the two-way text dialogue because it’s frictionless and user-friendly. The 70% Kept Rate is phenomenal,” says Colleen German, the loan communications team manager. “Once a customer is in the text pipeline, we can delve into deeper past-due situations.”
- Trusted Channel: Our dedicated short code has increased conversational consistency and reduced lag time that could jeopardize the customer relationship.
- Better Servicing: Tracking and reporting features have been key to timely payment reminders and managing the text channel team’s performance.
- Real-Time Conversations: Robust tracking improves the customer relationship in real time.
Increased RPC Rate by Adding SMS as a Communication Channel
“I had never utilized text in a collections operation. I was blown away by how responsive customers have been. Text is instant. Customers are communicating with us in real time. We are seeing a big improvement in our servicing capabilities”, notes Jamal Turner, the collections operations supervisor. “Especially in a repo situation, time is of the essence, and two-way text can help a customer remain current to avoid repossession.”
- Customer Preference: With an opt-out rate of less than ½ percent, customers are demonstrating their enthusiastic adoption of text.
- Highest Response: More pays are received via text than by phone, email, or other channels.
- Deeper Penetration: Text reaches all delinquencies, capturing the full portfolio.
- Flexibility: The ability to adjust the cadence of campaigns has yielded higher results.
Improved Operational Efficiency
By adding two-way text as an additional channel of customer communication, SAFCO not only generated higher revenue, but also substantially reduced its operational expenses.
- Highest ROI: Text has become the most efficient collections channel for SAFCO.
- Improved Productivity: The staff’s productivity has improved with the platform’s intuitive interface and ease of implementation.
- Deeper Penetration: Text reaches all delinquencies, capturing the full portfolio.
- Better Analytics: The staff experienced improved efficiencies with campaign analytics and account tracking.
We chose Solutions by Text for their compliance expertise with the opt-in process. They have helped us achieve a 70% kept rate—that’s 10% higher than our combined rate—across all contact channels. SBT is a leader in innovative methods of communication for collections.”
About SBT
SBT is the pioneer of FinText™, empowering enterprise financial services companies to compliantly engage, interact and transact with their consumers in real-time.
The nation’s largest consumer finance organizations rely on SBT’s robust compliance platform to mitigate legal and reputational risk while driving messaging and payments performance throughout the consumer lifecycle – from marketing and loan origination to servicing, collections and bill payment. SBT has been recognized as a Built In Best Place to Work and an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company.