Aiful has implemented FICO® Customer Communication Services to improve its customers’ experience and reduce collection costs. The solution delivers intelligent, scalable, two-way, automated voice, text, e-mail and mobile app notifications, with a human touch. Based on these results, the Kyoto-based lender plans to extend its use of the solution to its subsidiaries.

Shinichiro Okuyama, executive officer at Aiful, said, “Aiful Corporation’s strategy is to adapt global best practices in automated debt collection to align with Japanese cultural and business norms. Working with FICO, we have been able to leverage automated contact technology to match the results that a human caller can achieve, yet at a lower cost, while ensuring customer experience is excellent and compliant with Japanese collection legislation.”

FICO helped Aiful to develop legally compliant scripts for the Japanese market that consider regional speech patterns and social sentiments. The solution also incorporates tailored customer service options, such as varying promise-to-pay days, contact strategy and channel selection options.

Aiful and FICO also designed collection strategies that optimise the blend of automated voice with human agents to deliver the best possible cost-to-collect, cure rate and customer experience. Aiful then verified the performance of these strategies through champion/challenger testing and used the results to create a new best-practice approach to collection for the Japanese market.

This approach frees agents to focus on higher value work. It also ensures that Aiful is complying with strict regulations at all times, including during peak periods.

As a pay-as-you-go, cloud-based platform, FICO Customer Communication Services is specifically designed to meet the challenges and sensitivities of debt collection, including the need to respond quickly to new business goals and regulations.

Hiroshi Muramoto, country manager for FICO in Japan, said, “By developing a best-practice automated collection communication system, Aiful is demonstrating its leadership in the industry and paving the way for a new standard of call centre operation in Japan.”

FICO® Customer Communication Services currently places more than 1.5 million calls globally every day, which is comparable to calling every citizen of Kyoto, Japan. It also sends a quarter of a million SMS messages globally every weekday – the equivalent of one SMS for every word in the English language.