Ofwat's PR24 makes it clear that 'financial prudence, regulatory oversight and enhanced customer service must go hand in hand' and that 'innovation will be key.'

In addition, the water sector is set to be measured against the best in financial services and retail despite vastly different levels of investment in modern technology. 

Fortunately, in collections, there are substantial gains to be made that benefit your customers and your balance sheet. You can gain better insight into your debt portfolio, maximise automation, and control costs. Meanwhile, you can improve your understanding of customer circumstances, leading to faster payments, more sustainable arrangements and better take-up of social tariffs.

Here are the essential steps that will help you meet the challenging targets Ofwat has set out:

Make the move to real-time 

Real-time operating is the cornerstone of any modern collections system and is increasingly common in financial services and retail. It enables you to build a zero-latency operating capability for as-it-happens updates. Accurate information helps you respond to customer circumstances promptly and ensure that repayment arrangements are reasonable and sustainable. It is essential to achieving the improved customer outcomes and service standards that Ofwat expects to see.

A real-time system also helps you get more out of your budget by vastly reducing wasted effort and repetition. It gives your team more time to focus where the regulator will be focusing – on helping vulnerable customers and resolving challenging cases. It reduces the risk of sending outdated communications that create confusion, generate unnecessary incoming calls and can cause detriment to customers. 

Even better, real-time information can be used across the whole collections process and all channels, so agents and customer self-service work with the same data, and there are no discrepancies between human and online services. Better for customers and demonstrably consistent and compliant.

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Unify your communication channels

Ofwat is clear that customers must have a range of communication options available to them. However, it's easy to end up with a host of channels operating semi-independently, creating complexity and risking inconsistency. Integrating multiple channels into a single platform simplifies your operation and is much easier to manage. 

In addition, a unified approach delivers consistent, personalised service regardless of the customer's engagement method or whether they use one channel or many. With all information centralised in a single hub, crucial information won't get lost and can be accessed across any part of your process at any time. As well as being a better experience for customers, it helps reduce complaints caused by conflicting approaches.

Take advantage of dynamic data integration  

Unusable or unavailable data is a common problem in older or disjointed collections systems and a challenge that must be resolved to deliver the 'step change' that Ofwat demands. 

Systems with a flexible data structure allow all activities, from management decisions to agent actions, to be powered by exceptionally rich data, leading to better-informed strategies, more personalised arrangements and improved outcomes.

These systems possess several key capabilities. They absorb new data from multiple sources at an impressive speed and easily assimilate changes to data from existing sources. They also generate new data from customer behaviour and agent actions. All of this delivers transformative insights that hone customer treatment and help you continually evolve to get the best results.

Simplify compliance management

Submitting to regulatory scrutiny will never be comfortable, but it shouldn't be difficult. 

Modern collections software can provide provably accurate accounts of all your activity and outcomes – the who, why, what, and how. The key is unified compliance tracking powered by event sourcing (a way of storing data by capturing all changes as a sequence of immutable events). This provides you with a single source of truth.

As well as helping you explain your action to regulators, event logs can provide valuable business insights to aid planning and support agent activity. They enable you to analyse past events in context, query different strategy outcomes, and identify patterns and trends, all of which help to build efficient and effective processes that demonstrably deliver for customers.

With an event-sourced system, when the regulator asks, you will have the answers.

Build a culture of testing and change 

Water companies have been challenged to raise their game, and, always on the front line of customer care and media scrutiny, collections has the chance to lead. But, all of your team's ingenuity and expertise will go to waste if they can't put their ideas into practice. Poor collections systems quickly demoralise innovators and can lead to a 'can't do' culture where change takes too long to be effective. In the past, when communication channels, collections strategies, customer expectations and regulations were a lot simpler, this may have been acceptable. In today's dynamic, highly regulated environment, it falls short. 

Modern collections technology can empower your team. By making change easier and quicker, and business intelligence immediate and accurate, collections can become a centre of innovation and inspiration within the wider business.

Your team – familiar with collections, customers and your business – can make changes to strategy and communications to find effective approaches and adapt to change. Quickly and efficiently. It's part of the tool kit you will need to meet the challenges ahead.

Embrace the future

There is no doubt that PR24 will put pressure on water collections teams. Ofwat expects that help will double for customers in need of a helping hand. Collections will be a testing ground for success.

The benchmark is the always-on, personalised service common in other sectors, driven by cloud technology and real-time updates. Collections can use the same technologies to deliver the step-change Ofwat demands.

If water companies face being judged against the best in financial services and retail; they will need to consider how those sectors achieve their customer service standards and what needs to change. 

Our software is transforming debt management in the water sector, simplifying processes, improving data and helping teams to collect more.