OTTY had used an alternative consumer credit provider for a number of years. Its goal was to bring the OTTY experience to as many people as possible by increasing sales, retaining existing customers and improving brand awareness – but this aim was seriously compromised by an unwieldy credit conversion process.

Low credit sales

The original provider was simply too slow in assessing applications. When they did eventually reach a decision, they declined around 80% of all applications, leaving customers unhappy with both the decision and with OTTY. So what should have been a great way to increase sales, enhance the OTTY brand and boost customer satisfaction, was actually doing exactly the opposite.

Slow decision-making

A big part of the problem was that more than half of applications were referred to a manual underwriter. Customers often had to wait for up to four days for a decision, only to find out that they’d been declined. Meanwhile, the products they were hoping to purchase had to be ring-fenced during the decision-making process and so were unavailable to other customers.

Poor integration

An added burden — and cost — was that the incumbent system did not allow credit orders to be processed in OTTY’s native sales grid. Instead, OTTY had to create an entirely new process where staff logged into a separate system to view the status of decisions. Adding more complexity and bureaucracy to the process.