At around 4PM on October 18th, 2017, at its annual user conference in San Antonio, Quantrax Corporation stunned its audience by announcing that it had created the first software robot for the collection industry.
In the next few minutes, after a short video designed to have the impact of a modern Hollywood movie, Quantrax introduced its clients and visitors to Alex, an intelligent, virtual collection agent. A surprised audience watched a live demonstration of a robot that could understand questions in multiple languages, and speak to a consumer in full sentences. With no prior experience with the product, users were then invited to “try” Alex. Whether it was a balance inquiry, naming the creditors owed, asking for bankruptcy information or handling a dispute, the chatbot responded intelligently, asking questions and notating accounts with the skill and knowledge of a mid-level collection agent. Alex’s ability to negotiate a payment, clearly surprised everyone. It was simple and fast. In less than 5 minutes, Alex read the Mini-Miranda, provided the consumer with his balance, negotiated a 3-part payment arrangement, updated the system with credit card information and verified the consumer’s contact information, including an e-mail address.
It was not surprising that the rest of the conference was dominated by Alex. In what seemed to be a marketing tactic or a plan to build up anticipation and momentum, Quantrax waited until the next afternoon to announce the pricing for its robots. Not surprisingly, the still-amazed collection experts realized they were looking at a consistent, reliable and powerful solution that could be their receptionist, respond to consumer inquiries and take payments 24/7/365, saving about 45% compared to the cost of a conventional agent. The first-day orders that followed, will probably make this a historic moment for the collection industry, and certainly a memorable one for Quantrax and its clients.
Quantrax Corporation designed and built an expert system for the collection industry in 1991. Built ground-up to utilize artificial intelligence, RMEx (Receivables Management Expert) has a dominant market share in the United States and Canada, in proactive and innovative collection operations with 10 to over 1000 agents. Quantrax’s CEO thoughtfully compared this moment to Uber’s attack on the conventional taxi industry, or Apple’s assault on products like Blackberry and Nokia, resulting in the decline of some very successful industries that simply refused evolve or adapt to change. Quantrax predicted the imminent need for intelligent software and AI-based chatbots in the collection industry. This was based on a shrinking labor pool, often unreasonable compliance standards, and the growth of AI and chatbot technology in many customer service environments across multiple industries. When Mark Namba, Quantrax’s Director of Business Development and Operations was asked why this was different from conventional IVR’s, payment portals and collection avatars, he laughed and asked, “Can your avatars understand voice commands, look up multiple accounts in about one second, recite the clients owed along with the safe-harbor language, the balance for each creditor and the consumer’s total balance? Have you seen an avatar or IVR that understood and talked Spanish, French, Chinese and Haitian Creole?”
In an era where hiring, training and retaining collectors is becoming more difficult by the day, Quantrax’s entry into robotics was unanimously hailed as a game-changer that significantly enhanced its industry-leading, tried and proven AI platform. When Mark Namba was asked about how this announcement would impact Quantrax’s competition and the landscape of collection software, his response was “Most of the collection industry understands the need for new thinking, but runs on very old technology. The mergers and acquisitions within the collection software industry, along with an obvious lack of investment in new products by the major vendors, do not help an industry that needs modern technology to address new regulations and rapidly changing consumer behavior. This announcement will give Quantrax the industry attention and recognition it truly deserves – There’s going to be a lot of companies fighting for second place”.
Quantrax Corporation is a technology company that created an intelligent collection platform over 20 years ago. They believe that the ARM industry has been poorly served by collection technology that has not evolved or kept up with the great potential of computing power, or challenging industry changes. Self-funded, Quantrax has continued to successfully develop and deploy technology that offers modern solutions to old problems.