A competitive market

The UK mobile market is a competitive environment with four operators and 75.1 million mobile connections, meaning that customer retention has never been more important. O2 is the commercial brand of Telefónica UK Limited and is a leading digital communications company in the UK, running 2G, 3G and 4G networks across the region. To retain this competitive position, O2 is focused on offering its customers a high-quality experience. An important part of this process is ensuring that the payments and collections channel is consistent with the rest of the customer journey and brand ‘experience’.

The project

Digital Tech Solutions had been working with O2 for over 10 years, providing digital collection and payment services and advice, consisting of automated voice, SMS and web payments. This deep experience of O2’s business and expertise in payment technologies, meant that Digital Tech Solutions was asked to devise and launch a new and fully Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant collections process – ‘Pay by SMS’. Pay by SMS is a new payment channel available for customers in arrears, allowing them to resolve their outstanding balances with a simple reply to an SMS message. Customers with a registered card are sent an SMS, advising them of their outstanding balance and requesting payment. To pay, a customer replies “yes” followed by the last four digits of the card. Customers without a registered card are sent a one-way SMS asking them to call the automated payment IVR (interactive voice response) to pay and register their card for the future. On average, this requires customers to be on the phone for less than 20 seconds.

Results

By using cost effective and relevant communications channels, partnered with genuinely innovative payment strategies and technologies provided by Digital Tech Solutions, O2 has simplified and enhanced the collections experience for its customers, and generated an increase in early life and later stage arrears payments.

• 43% of eligible customers entering collections, have a registered card
• 23% of customers pay by SMS
• O2 customers with registered cards are five times more likely to pay than non-registered customers
• 4% more customers removed from collections within three days