Access Finance, Bulgaria's leading credit card issuer, needed to reach cardholders about upcoming payments without sounding like a collections agency. We deployed voice agents that make 2,000 soft-collection calls a day—friendly reminders that keep customers current and the business paid.
The Challenge
Access Finance is Bulgaria's leading credit card provider—issuing products like Biala Karta and AXI Card to more than 160,000 active cardholders. With that scale comes a simple but expensive problem: people forget. Taxes, credit card balances, upcoming due dates—most late payments aren't malice, they're memory. Reaching tens of thousands of customers with a human collections team would be slow, costly, and easy to get wrong. Aggressive hard-collection tactics would recover some cash and burn the relationship. They needed a way to remind people at volume without sounding like a debt collector.
The Solution
We built voice agents for soft calling—the early, polite stage of collections that assumes good faith. A soft call is not a threat and not a legal notice. It's a courteous reminder: you have a payment coming up, here's what's due, here's how to take care of it. The agent explains the balance, answers simple questions, and captures a promise to pay when the customer is ready. No escalation language, no pressure. Just a helpful nudge before a missed payment turns into fees or a damaged standing. We then scaled that motion to 2,000 outbound calls a day.
The Outcome
The system works. 47% of customers actually pick up—an unusually high rate for outbound calling. Of those who answer, 76% promise they will pay. Customers are happier because they didn't accidentally forget a due date and slide into penalties. Access Finance is happier because cash comes in without a hard-collections operation. Everyone wins.
soft-collection reminders at scale
of customers answer the call
of answered calls commit to payment
helpful reminder, not hard collections