The consumer desire for a brighter Christmas amidst continuing Covid-19 restrictions has seen a sharp rise in ‘buy now pay later’ schemes, and with furlough ending and depression rates rising, a perfect storm lies ahead for all collections teams as consumers juggle multiple payment demands.

Telecoms organisations face a highly challenging business environment as digitisation continues to fuel the relentless disruption of established business models and practices, to enable increasing competition from new, more agile, entrants and forces constant regulatory changes as the market grapples with the societal shift to living and conducting business online.

Energy Day at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) was dominated by the message: ‘consign coal to history’.

The second year of the pandemic has seen more people in the UK slide further into debt and organisations need to recalibrate their response through empathetic collections.

You don’t have to be involved in collections to be aware that the last 18 months have affected the financial circumstances of a huge number of people.

At Cop 26 in Glasgow last October, world leaders pledged to end deforestation, move away from coal and curb methane emissions, amongst many other revised targets.

Treating customers with empathy has been an increasingly important area of focus within the customer experience industry.

Since January 2021, global market forces and, more recently, soaring natural gas prices have forced no fewer than 14 smaller energy suppliers to cease trading.

The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated very clearly that “human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe”.

The UK Government has pledged that the country will become net-zero by 2050. Achieving this will require both huge changes to our energy system and innovative low carbon solutions supported by consumers.