5 reasons your team keeps receiving the wrong documents - or no document at all

Your employees spend 20% to 50% of their time collecting documents about cases. The war for talents is on and so is the pressure on costs. It can happen that your customers provide blurry or unreadable documents. But sometimes, they just provide the wrong ones. Here are 5 best practices to adopt or issues we learned to avoid when requesting documents.

#1 - Customers provide outdated documents

To build a proper case, you need recent documents. By mistake, or because it takes too much time to request a new version, your customer may provide an older version of the document. Outdated documents can account for up to 23% of document invalidation.

To reduce the number of outdated documents provided, you can:

• Nudge the customer by explaining the impact of providing a non-valid document. "If the document is not date-valid, your case processing will be delayed".

• Embed real-time validation of documents. This enables your customer to feel reassured when providing their documents. Or take immediate action if necessary.

#2 - Customers are not familiar with requested documents - but your staff is

If you've ever worked in operations, you know that handlers perform the same tasks several times a day. This means that if they handle very specific documents, they know them inside and out—every section and every different version.

Let's take the example of an employment termination form. Benefits workers handle dozens of them every day to process unemployment benefit requests. There is a high chance that the person applying is providing the document for the first time, or hasn’t done so in 10 years.

And this is where the communication becomes complicated.

To avoid those situations:

• Make staff aware that their day-to-day tasks are, in fact, exceptional events for your customers.

• Ensure you provide extra guidance to your customers when requesting documents. Offer examples of documents and explain how they can check if they have been correctly filled out by third parties.

#3 - Your processes are too manual

Managing the collection of documents for cases is a real hassle. The most organized employees may have their emails neatly filed in folders within Outlook, or they may diligently set tasks to follow up on cases in the future.

But the reality is that most employees are not that organized. Failing to collect documents in a timely manner can lead to lost business or increased regulatory risks.

Data shows that you need twice the number of reminders for cases where the contract is already signed. For example, think of issuing an insurance policy and then asking for the driving license afterward "because the customer needed the policy ASAP."

Here are some concrete actions to streamline your document collection process:

• Automating reminders: Check your current software to see if you can automate reminders—or use one that does. Sending just one reminder nearly doubles the completion rate.

   

• Take manual action when the automated sequence is complete. It is impossible to reach a 100% completion rate through automated processes alone. Once the automated steps are done, a human needs to take over. Ensure that your automated system creates a task in your employee’s workflow for this follow-up.

   

• Centralize follow-up as much as possible. If team size permits, assign one person to oversee the process. Collecting documents is not always the top priority for your team, so having someone responsible for follow-ups with a central view is essential.

#4 - Your customers don't know where or how to get the documents

Today, governments, banks and other organizations provide customer zone. Some documents are available in self-service, which reduce the friction for your customers. But often, customers don't know they exist.

Sometimes, your customers ask their accountant, former employers, or bankers for their documents. Writing the email to get the document can be quite stressful for them. Because they are not familiar with the document to request. Or because they don't have time.

Here are our advices:

• Provide links to official platforms and guide on how to gather the document. The guides can be videos embedded in your communication or form.

• Create email templates that your customer can reuse. Pro tip: using a mailto: link will directly open their email software with the content of the email pre-filled. The way to go to provide a 5 star experience.

#5 - There are just too many requested documents

Things get messy when your employee needs to request 6 documents or more to your customers. Because they are exchanging 10+ emails to do this. And because it is not done in a single interaction, it is challenging to get a clear status.

Some documents are invalid and need to be requested again. When analyzing information, additional documents are added to the list. Some documents are directly provided, others need to be requested to third parties.

Long story short, the most efficient employees start to track the list of documents. They do this when requesting six or more documents. It helps them have a clear status and share it with the customer.

It can be done in a note assigned to the customer or in an Excel sheet-like format.

Here are our recommendations:

• Set-up a centralised view in your case management tool, with a clear status for each document. Do share it with the customer at every interaction if possible.

• Use a solution that does this for you and keep track of requested, validated and invalid documents.

Stop wasting time collecting documents

Requesting documents can take up to 50% of your exper times. We listed 5 tips and tricks to help your team and customers complete their cases faster:

• Ensure that all documents provided have a valid date. If necessary, inform the customer or use real-time AI validation.

• Some of your customers may not be familiar with the specific documents they need to provide. Offer more guidance and encourage your team to be empathetic in their communication.

• You rely too much on the goodwill of your employees to manage reminders. Automate reminder processes as much as possible to ensure consistency and efficiency.

• Some documents are easy to get from platforms or third parties, but customers may not know this. Provide them with guidance to simplify the process.

• For more than six documents, organize requests and update customers. Missing or invalid documents can cause confusion, so keep them informed.

You are a team manager or an expert in professional services? Make sure to read other articles and learn how to streamline your operations.