Reducing complaints and unlocking £1m from aged portfolio
The challenge
Our client, one of the UK’s largest water companies, had a substantial stock of Live / on-supply consumer customers in aged arrears who were choosing not to engage despite the client having made numerous previous contact attempts via letter, SMS, calls, doorstep visits and signposting to tailored support, as well as extensive activity via third party DCAs.
The client wanted to explore ways to better understand these customers’ circumstances and encourage them to engage with positive outcomes, both to reduce outstanding arrears and improve management of ongoing consumption charges.
The solution
Just undertook a rigorous portfolio analysis and used its proprietary LitigationScore to complement the client’s own well-established internal scorecard in order to identify additional accounts suitable for litigation, rank ordering them in ability to pay and appropriateness for Litigation activity.
The client also wanted to test an alternative supplier to benchmark their existing enforcement providers. Just provided the client with a fully managed enforcement service, providing access to a diverse network of enforcement suppliers and agents.
Process & results
The client provided us with a batch of aged arrears accounts and from this portfolio Just identified a proportion of accounts suitable for litigation where the customer had the means to pay, but for some reason was choosing not to engage.
The outcomes exceeded expectations:
- High contact rates: 58% of customers engaged during litigation and enforcement stages
- Payments increased: 20% made payment at litigation and 45% at enforcement
- Total collections exceeded £1m (including cash and plan benefit across all segments)
- Zero complaints
The success of this initial project has progressed to a multi-year flow engagement.