In an increasingly challenging environment, residents need more support than ever to help manage their arrears. Meanwhile, Local Authorities are required to do more with less for residents who commonly do not engage. That’s where Voicescape Collections can help.
In our recent webinar, Cutting Through the Silence – An Ethical, Scalable Approach to Council Tax Recovery, we crystallised the key challenges faced by Local Authorities and how the core features of our award-winning automated solution can help you overcome them. We also welcomed Mark Bodger – Business Rates and Recovery Team Manager at Great Yarmouth Borough Council, who shared how Voicescape automation has empowered his team to:
- Reach residents earlier
- Reduce manual workloads
- Boost collection outcomes
- Free up staff to focus on complex cases
Couldn’t attend? Read our roundup below to discover how Voicescape can be leveraged to reshape debt collection for your team.
Tackling sector challenges
Local Authorities are dealing with an increasing amount of vulnerable customers who need targeted support with their arrears. Assisting those residents while maximising income collection is an increasingly complex task – one where engagement is key. But a lack of resources, manual processes, and unreliable data make this an uphill struggle for teams who want to engage earlier to prevent further escalations.
These challenges not only make it difficult to support residents out of debt, but can lead to internal strain and staff attrition that makes momentum difficult to retain. You may have already considered automation as a solution, but this throws up additional issues.
A live poll from the webinar revealed a lack of resources to be the most common challenge amongst attendees, followed by impractical manual processes and budget pressures. Enter: Voicescape – fully-managed digital automation, little-to-no IT support needed, and repeatedly proven to deliver return-on-investment.
Voicescape Collections for Local Authorities
Voicescape Collections is a communication and engagement facilitator that helps Local Authorities connect with their communities – shouldering the burden of constant outbound calling. By harnessing the power of voice with automation, our solution helps you engage with the right people, in the right way, at the right time. This removes the manual load from your officers to receive inbound calls from residents who are ready to engage.
Our solution can be adapted to collect all debt types suitable to your needs and timings, using local accents to build trust and tailored messages dependent on the cohort – driven by behavioural science. Voicemails, texts, and nudges are built into the outbound approach to encourage customers to loop back into the automated contact process and take action.
From here, Collections steers residents either to self-serve or contact you directly where appropriate. Meanwhile, automated historical data cleansing helps boost those successful contact rates. All supported and managed by our Customer Success Team who are not only on hand to guide and fix any issues, but to support your creativity with the system.
How Great Yarmouth faced financial pressures with behavioural outreach
Great Yarmouth Borough Council is responsible for the billing and collection of just over 50,000 Council Tax Dwellings, which represents approximately £74 million worth of revenue. Parts of the borough are among the most deprived areas of the UK, making residents in these areas acutely vulnerable to financial pressures. In turn, this adds pressure on the services the council provides.
They also face unique additional challenges:
- In 2024/25 they made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce the maximum Council Tax support for working-age households by 11.5% which impacted over 6000 households and added more than a million pounds in collections.
- Traditional recovery letters were losing effectiveness. Notice fatigue and disengagement were growing.
- Operational teams were overwhelmed by high volumes and call spikes.
In an environment where financial hardship is common and there is resistance to engage, Great Yarmouth needed residents to engage earlier in a more constructive way. By spending less time manually chasing residents who weren’t engaging, they would be able to help more vulnerable residents reduce debt before the enforcement stage.
Enter Voicescape
Great Yarmouth brought Voicescape on board to reach residents in a more timely, relevant and accessible way. Ultimately, to cut through the silence. They were clear not to replace human interaction, but to give the team capacity to support earlier, more human-centred engagement with residents in arrears.
We guided their transition away from letters with a combination of automated voice and SMS campaigns targeting all stages of the recovery process. The system was adapted to intervene proactively at each stage of Council Tax recovery with digital nudges. Then, leveraging behavioural science, they adapted tones, language, timings, and calls-to-action according to the recovery stage and individual household to prevent overwhelm.
Great Yarmouth also leveraged the solution to engage and support residents over Council Tax Hardship Fund allocation and liability order cases. For the latter, they ran a drop-in face-to-face clinic, using Voicescape automation to support their promotion and outreach efforts. This contributed to a huge response, with approximately 100 attendees, some of whom acknowledged that the automated messages encouraged them to attend.
The results?
- +0.2% increase in collection rate by £170k
- £170,000 increase in prior-year arrears recovery
- 1,804 fewer calls to Council Tax line, equating to 601 hours saved and £25,000 annualised efficiency gain
- 479 conversations, 737 transfers to automated payment line, and 270 online payment link requests
- 40% increase in court-stage engagement – more residents responded before reaching enforcement
Operational efficiencies from Voicescape helped Great Yarmouth’s staff support more vulnerable residents and protect public money in a difficult environment. They’ve changed resident behaviour and gained fantastic results from some of the hardest residents to engage with.
“Voicescape’s contribution has been real, and has affected collection efficiency and customer engagement. It isn’t just being seen as a useful bolt on anymore, it’s becoming part of the way we operate. Colleagues across our Revenues and Benefits team see Voicescape as a first-line tool, which shows a cultural shift in how we think about debt recovery and resident engagement.” – Mark Bodger, Business Rates and Recovery Team Manager
What does 2025/26 look like for Voicescape and Great Yarmouth?
- Expanded use in Sundry Debts
- Targeted campaigns for Direct Debit and Council Tax support uptake
- Behavioural-science informed messages for EA, AEO, and AOB returns
- Actively segmenting by ability to pay with tailored tone and approach
“This isn’t just about technology for us, it’s about communicating with residents in a way that feels supportive, clear and timely. Voicescape has given us a platform to do that, and in doing so, it’s helped us to protect public funds and support our more vulnerable residents, and create a more sustainable recovery model. If we can support residents to engage earlier, then we feel like we’ve already won half the battle.” – Mark Bodger, Business Rates and Recovery Team Manager
Support residents and maximise revenue collection with Voicescape
As echoed by Mark in this insightful webinar, Voicescape Collections isn’t about replacing human connection, it’s about engaging residents in a way that works for them. This frees up capacity for your staff to have the meaningful conversations that lead to progress, and ultimately, empower your residents to reduce debt, and your team to maximise income collection.
For a friendly chat about how Voicescape Collections can help reshape your revenues and benefits approach, get in touch today.