By Adele Lomas, General Manager - Recoveries

The tide is turning. Thanks to campaigns like the Credit Services Association’s #heretohelp - which aims to dispel myths about debt sector businesses and to encourage customers to talk about their money problems earlier - confidence is building in a market which is improving its reputation.

It’s becoming more widely accepted that reputable debt recovery law firms, if they’re doing things right, can actually help reduce stress and worry by putting customers back in control of their finances.

We want people in debt to know that if they need to contact us, they will be treated with fairness, understanding and compassion. When someone gets a letter from us because they’re in debt, we realise that one of the first things they are likely to do is Google us to find out who we are and what they might expect from us.

As well as our presence on the independent review website Trustpilot, where we are rated highly, we’ve just launched a newly refreshed customer website which aims to be engaging and reassuring.

As part of this, we’ve created a brand new Customer Case Study section, which brings to life how we can help customers in various common situations – such as unemployment, illness, bereavement or relationship breakdown - get back in control of their finances.

We hope these relatable stories, based on real-life scenarios, will help customers understand that:

• we’re here to help,
• we will always try everything we can to help them get the best outcome, and
• that our door is always open at every stage of the process.

We believe that displaying this human touch online will encourage customers to engage with us to manage their arrears as early as possible – that’s certainly the feedback we’re getting in practice.

Of course, once a customer does make that first contact, we must keep them engaged until a resolution is reached. If we recruit, train and retain the right people who display genuine care for our customers, we know they are more likely to bring customers along on the journey, and that’s why we’ve invested so heavily recently in recruitment and retention.

Digital solutions are also crucial, so we’re investing significantly in our tech to ensure we stay ahead of the game, and will soon be able to offer our customers an even wider range of ways to communicate with us. 

Come and take a look around our customer case study section - https://www.ascent.co.uk/case-studies/ 

We’d love to hear what you think.