Downturn, Consumer Mobility Builds Business for LiveVox

The economic downturn and changes in lifestyle recently helped one collection industry vendor to exponentially increase its business.

Early this month the call center technology provider LiveVox bucked the slow down and reported a huge jump in minutes used and new customer acquisitions (“LiveVox Records 400 Percent Increase in Minutes Used Over Past 12 Months,” June 11).

The change is due to the increasing mobility of the U.S. consumer, the rise in collections as the economy weakens and LiveVox’s hosted dialer solution, according to John McNamara, the company’s chief marketing officer.

“Everyone is working on a bigger pool of accounts, that helps us,” McNamara told insideARM, pointing out that a collection agency needs to make more contacts to collect on more accounts. The need to make additional contracts is compounded by consumers’ use of wireless phones in addition to, and sometimes in place of, traditional landlines – forcing call centers to place more calls to get to the debtor.

“Hit rates are way down,” McNamara said.

One solution some firms use is a hosted IVR, but that technology doesn’t provide any feedback loop to scale calls up or down depending on agent availability, leading to longer on-hold times, more disconnects and poorer customer (debtor) service, McNamara said.

The traditional method for handling increased volumes is adding more phone lines and other equipment, but that’s expensive, McNamara said. Instead, some agencies are opting for a hosted solution using IP technology to add virtual phone lines, which can be provisioned as needed, and billed for as used. The technology can also scale up or scale down calls as needed, he said.