Colleague Corner: Clare French Shares How Cabot Credit Management Builds Trust with Consumers to Help Them Find Financial Freedom
Welcome to Encore’s Colleague Corner. In this web series, we’ll get a chance to learn from our colleagues across Encore about their careers and what our Mission to create pathways to economic freedom means to them, while touching on aspects of our culture.
This month we spoke to Clare French, Head of Service Excellence at Cabot Financial in the U.K., to hear her perspective on how Cabot builds trust with consumers.
Q: What are your interests or career goals, and how did they lead you to join Cabot?
A: One of the main reasons I came to work for Cabot almost 10 years ago was the way it treated its consumers. It starts with a strong culture of caring, builds through working collaboratively with the people we serve, and culminates in achieving our shared goal of helping consumers restore their financial health. Through this approach, we make a real difference for consumers, often in difficult times in their lives.
Q: Our Mission is to help create pathways to economic freedom. What does that mean to you? What do you think it means to our consumers?
A: Our Mission is the culmination of our shared goals with our consumers — to help make credit accessible to them by partnering with them on their journey. The simple fact is, if our consumers don’t succeed, we don’t succeed. They want to reset and put challenges behind them. We want to help them clear their debt in the shortest affordable time and in a manner that works for them.
Our Mission isn’t just a slogan, poster or mouse mat. It’s a framework for every decision we make. Each time we work with a consumer, we ask ourselves, ‘are we engaging with honesty, empathy and respect? Have we delivered our very best? Are we treating them how we’d want to be treated?’
Q: What unique role do you, as Head of Service Excellence, and your team play in helping consumers create pathways to economic freedom?
A: The teams within Service Excellence help to improve consumer experience by addressing dissatisfaction promptly and effectively. We identify and resolve issues that hinder customer satisfaction through root cause analysis. By doing so, we enable consumers to have smoother experiences and more trust in our business. By continuously analyzing consumer feedback and refining processes, my teams contribute to ongoing improvements in services, ultimately increasing their satisfaction.
Q: Would you share a time when you experienced caring, finding a better way to achieve something, or being inclusive and collaborative at Cabot?
A: The colleagues working in the Service Excellence department demonstrate every day how much they care, not only toward each other but toward our consumers. Demonstrating care towards consumers involves a combination of actions, communication and genuine empathy. They do this every day by actively listening to them, providing prompt responses and personalizing those responses to ensure we are treating each consumer as an individual.
Q: In one word, how does our Mission of creating pathways to economic freedom make you feel?
A: Inspired
Q: Given the challenging economic environment in the U.K., what are some ways Cabot stands ready to help consumers?
A: Through honesty, empathy and respect, we build trust, which is step one. This helps remove the fear and stigma people have about working with our industry. It helps ensure better relationships with consumers, which means we can find out what they really need to be successful. After that, we get to step two — find a plan that works.
We’re also ready to help our consumers however they prefer to communicate with us. We recognize that not everyone wants to talk to us on the phone and would prefer to communicate via our website. Within this online solution, consumers can complete a financial budget calculator. The budget planner asks a few questions to better understand their financial situation and offers a solution that’s custom-made for them. The approach is tailored, collaborative, and not dictatorial. It truly is about finding the best way forward.
Q: What message would you give to consumers who are facing financial challenges and may be hearing from Cabot for the first time?
A: If there’s one message I wish every consumer could hear, it would be to please know you can communicate with us from the start. When that happens, it opens the path to making good on your debt and restoring your credit. It also opens a path for you to share with us if you’re facing a hardship, which we can address together. Many of the concerns and misunderstandings consumers have about debt collection could be resolved if they simply knew we’re there to support them.