03 Jan This Really is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year for Lenders and Call Centers
Call centers experience their heaviest volume of the year between Thanksgiving and the second week of January. Payday loans are flying out the door as consumers turn to lenders for their holiday shopping cash. Once the presents are open, consumers apply for payday cash advances again to get them through the first couple weeks of the year.
Lenders’ loan caps are in place throughout the year, however, it can be a rare occasion to reach them. It’s a different story during the holiday rush when lenders can hit these caps by 2:00 pm every day.
What makes this time of year even more wonderful is the idea that lenders can do no wrong when it comes to gaining new business. The holidays are a perfect time to buy leads or try other types of new business generating strategies.
Keep two things in mind while handling the upswing in call and loan volume.
ONE: Take any return on investment measurements with a grain of salt. Remember, no matter what you do it’s nearly impossible for loan volume not to increase over the holidays. ROI statistics will be skewed, making them unreliable when evaluating a strategy’s success.
TWO: Manage loan volume by adjusting underwriting requirements. Let’s say you want to stick to a cap of 50 payday loans per day. By tightening underwriting requirements, the loan cap is maintained and the quality of loans improves.
Centrinex has been in the payday loan call center industry for a long time. The holiday rush for payday loans is temporary. We see it happen every year and every year it falls off once the mad dash of gift buying has ended.
We’ll cover steps you can take to survive the drop off in volume in an upcoming blog. For now, take advantage of the increased volume and make hay while the sun shines.