The flurry of activity at this years CS Week conference and tradeshow is well underway in Washington DC.  A common topic for discussion at the event is how do you improve the credit and collection process in today's economy.   

After attending several collection optimization and mitigating credit risk seminars and workshops (including our own).  I am more than convinced that giving Utilities the ability to segment their customers based on past behavioural history is one of the best indicator of predicting future behaviour. This is accomplished by organizing your data and segmenting your customers in risk categories.  When risk is appropriately organized your organization can focus on high risk accounts by way of making accelerated phone calls and door knocks and with your low risk accounts call less frequently and make greater use lower cost effective media-channels (email, SMS).   

Here are some results Utility customers are seeing as a result of Segmenting their customers and leveraging this approach.

• Reduction in # of printed notices (save on print fees & postage)
• Reduction of both inbound and outbound collection calls  
• Reduction of write-offs to bad debt
• Reduction in the number of credit related disconnects
• Reduction in DSO

How are you optimizing your collection and credit optimizatin process?