The DIAGONAL Group has always been concerned about environmental protection and sustainability. For the company, saving electricity or separating waste wasn’t enough – they wanted more! The company wanted to take a big step toward becoming a green company. The Collection division had the greatest potential for this. The Digital First campaign was born out of this motivation. With this idea, the company has once again succeeded in revolutionizing the debt collection segment.
Find out how the DIAGONAL Group did it and what came out of it in this article.
The idea for sustainable debt collection
The DIAGONAL Group had the idea to revolutionize debt collection. Debt collection should become more sustainable, with over 380,000 letters sent in 2019. A letter sent by mail generates about 20 grams of CO2 from paper to printing to mailing. That’s not much for one letter, but for 380,000 letters, it’s a whopping 7.6 tons of CO2 a year! This is where the DIAGONAL Group found the greatest potential for savings. The challenge, however, was to work in an environmentally friendly manner while achieving the same level of success for clients.
How to overcome the challenges of sustainable collection?
The company came up with the idea of replacing letter mailings with e-mails as far as possible. The DIAGONAL Group is known for highly automated processes, so the technical implementation was not a challenge. The digital processes and server capacities simply had to be expanded. At the same time, binding communication at eye level has always been a key factor in the company’s success. The big question, then, was whether the change in collection letters would create the same liability with delinquent customers as it would with the letter. That’s what we had to find out!
A test run with selected clients should provide clarity. In their case, parts of the communication were replaced by e-mails. A complete success! The realization rate remained unchanged at a high level. Now it was clear: whether letter or e-mail makes no difference. The Digital First campaign was ripe for all mandates.
Successful collection with success for the environment
Since the launch of our Digital First campaign, the DIAGONAL Group has been able to convince over 90% of clients of the environmental project. This has resulted in a reduction in company-wide mail volumes of approximately 38%. The Digital First campaign enabled the DIAGONAL Group to avoid mailing around 120,000 letters in 2021. This has saved around 2.4 tons of CO2 so far! Digital dispatch brings even more advantages: Communication by e-mail not only saves resources and protects the environment. It also saves time. While sending a letter can take up to three business days, sending an email takes only minutes.
The DIAGONAL Group has shown the way: Sustainable debt collection is possible at all levels. Human, economical and environmentally friendly!
