Kept-promise rate: the metric that separates activity from recovery

A collections floor can have an excellent day by every dashboard it looks at and collect nothing. Dials, connects and promises are all counts of effort, and effort is easy to generate. The kept-promise rate, the share of promises that actually turn into payment by the promised date, is where effort meets reality.

Why so few operations have the number

Usually because the promise was never recorded as a structured thing. A note that says will pay soon cannot be measured. A promise needs a date and an amount, captured as fields, or the whole downstream calculation is impossible. Where the number is missing, the cause is almost always the disposition list rather than the reporting.

What a low kept rate is telling you

• Promises are being extracted rather than agreed. A borrower who says yes to end the call will not pay.
• The amount was unaffordable. A promise for the full arrears from someone who can manage a third is a scheduled failure.
• There was no reminder between the promise and the date, so an honest intention got overtaken by the month.
• Paying was harder than agreeing. If the borrower has to find a portal, log in and locate the loan, some share will not.
• The money arrived and was not matched, so the promise looks broken in your system and kept in theirs.

The things that reliably raise it

Take smaller promises. A partial amount that gets paid is worth more than a full amount that does not, both in cash and in what it teaches you about the borrower. Send the payment method during the conversation rather than after. Remind on the day before and the morning of, referencing the borrower own commitment rather than the policy. And close the loop with a confirmation, which prevents the follow-up call that undoes the goodwill.

Segment it or it will mislead you

Kept rate by caller tells you who is agreeing to fiction. By bucket, it tells you where promises stop being a useful instrument. By promise size relative to the instalment, it tells you where your callers should be pitching. And by channel of capture, it tells you whether promises taken by an automated agent hold as well as those taken by a person, which is a question worth having evidence about rather than opinions.

One number to pair it with

Track time from promise to payment alongside it. A high kept rate with payments landing on the last possible day means your reminders are working. A high kept rate with payments landing immediately means you are probably taking promises from people who were going to pay anyway, and the real work is elsewhere.