Navigating Change: How Fairstone Modernized Collections For Today’s Consumers
ABOUT FAIRSTONE
Fairstone Bank and its subsidiary, Fairstone Financial Inc. (“Fairstone”), form a leading consumer lending group. Collectively, they offer credit cards and rewards programs, point-of-sale financing through merchant partners, automobile financing via dealerships, and unsecured and secured personal loans and mortgages online and in 250 Fairstone branches coast to coast.
THE GOAL
Navigating Change: Modernizing Collections For Today’s Consumers
Fairstone, a leading consumer lending group with nearly a century of lending experience, faced a timely challenge in adapting to changing consumer preferences and reducing delinquencies.
They recognized that busy, evolving consumer lifestyles made reaching and engaging past-due customers challenging and that aversion to traditional communication methods, such as phone calls, was growing.
THE SOLUTION
In response to these challenges, Fairstone wanted a modern, efficient, and less intrusive solution to streamline the collections process for their internal teams and customers.
Fairstone chose Lexop as their collections software for a few important reasons:
1. Digital Communication Channels: Aware of shifting communication preferences, Lexop's platform allowed Fairstone to automate reminder sequences to their customers via email and SMS.
2. Self-Service Payment Process: The convenience of Lexop's integrated payment portal within the email communication helped customers self-serve and make payments faster.
3. Positive Customer Experience: The shift to less-intrusive past-due reminders and offering a digital repayment experience enabled customers to pay their late bills without speaking to an agent.
“Emails with payment links are very convenient and provide a fast and easy payment solution. When sending these emails, clients are making payments faster than they normally would. Upon receipt of payment the account is removed from our working list faster and agents can then focus on accounts that require our help.”
“Everyone is very busy; with this technology we can increase our chances of connecting with our clients and allowing them to self-serve.”
Clients don’t want to constantly explain why they are late on their payments, giving them the opportunity to self-cure is a win/win solution.
We’re able to optimize our resources and have agents focus on more important accounts.
Once they get that email with the payment link, it’s so convenient that they pay faster. And by paying faster, it removes accounts that our agents need to call or spend time on, and they can focus on the accounts that need our help
THE RESULTS
In a year-over-year comparison of accounts serviced by Lexop (note: volumes over the 12-month period tripled), Lexop's digital collections solution yielded significant results.
- 228% increase in the amount collected through Lexop’s platform
- Increase in engagement and payment success - With Lexop's Sequence feature and automation capabilities, Fairstone could efficiently add multiple communication touchpoints to their customers at different stages of the recovery process. By analyzing campaign performance, Fairstone could continuously refine its collection strategies, improving the efficiency of its email and SMS messaging. As a result, Fairstone saw a 99% increase in the amount collected per message.
In addition to better communication, Lexop’s user-friendly solution for resolving late payments through a self-serve payment portal, led to a 44% increase in the amount collected per account.
- Operational efficiency - With a large segment of customers now able to self-serve and pay late bills without agent intervention, Fairstone could redirect their call agents to more value-added tasks, assisting higher-risk accounts in greater need.
- Expanded to new lending areas - Encouraged by the success, Fairstone expanded the use of Lexop into their credit card and auto loans portfolio, quadrupling its utilization within their lending portfolio and increasing the accounts serviced by 128%. Fairstone is actively exploring opportunities to harness Lexop's capabilities in additional lending areas to enhance its collections efforts further.
CONCLUSION
Embracing digital engagement, Fairstone's customers propelled the company to enhance its collections strategy, resulting in outstanding achievements. This success highlights the impact of adopting digital solutions to exceed customer expectations and achieve business performance objectives in a rapidly changing financial landscape.
Transform Your Past-Due Member Experience
Empower your members with our award-winning collection software.
