DMBM530810 | Debt and return pursuit: VAT: understanding the customer: introduction

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Customer behaviour and campaigns

An appreciation of customer behaviour and the risk that a customer represents to the Department, maximises opportunities to improve business compliance. It does this by offering advice and education on one hand and increasingly assertive techniques to enforce compliance for those who fail to reform.

Activity should be targeted and designed to progress the case to a positive outcome within a set time period.

DMB now manages most of its debt using a campaign-based approach.

Campaigns are about:

• segmenting new and existing debt

• designing the most effective collection strategies for each segment

• understanding the impact of our interventions

• planning what work will arrive where in our organization, so that we can better match available resource to the work to be done.

By putting to better use the information we hold about our customers we can:

• predict how each taxpayer is likely to behave

• place them in a category with other taxpayers with the same or similar behaviours and payment patterns

• treat each category or group in a way that is most likely to resolve the debt.

Campaigns are designed to respond to customer behaviours using the most appropriate range of tools at our disposal in the order most likely to get the best result.