Priyanka Kotian

Survivorship Bias is an error that has caused due to focus only on one or few significant aspects of the subject or process while ignoring or overlooking other important aspects those could cause incorrect conclusions or output to the process  or subject undertaken.
Would like to share one of the projects that we had worked for Collections department caused due to the negative impact of this concept- 
Here the collections team is analyzing the past debt recovery with the help of the collections data, 
they realized that that by sending the timely reminders and phone calls technique they were able to 
achieve the highest recovery, due to this the focus was shifted mainly to these customer to double down this strategy for future collection, however while performing this activity they did not realize
that the debts are highly recovered from the specific customers only, while this technique did 
not work in case of other customers debt recovery  who did not respond to either calls 
or email leading to lower recovery rate from other segment of customers causing increased outstanding debts and potential financial instability to the department and company.
Steps taken to overcome the above issue - 
1. Customer Segment Analysis - Segment wise data breakdown helped to understand the demographics and different 
locations and types of customer to customize the strategy and work out more effective approach to recover
2. Tested Alternative methods for recovery - Other than timely emails and telephonic calls, checked on other methods based on the historical data to understand the nature of the customer which they may best respond to. This included personally meeting up the client who believes in traditional method of working.
3. Spotted failure patterns - Looked at the commonalities and differentiated factors which worked best for the specific customer and why, this helped us understand and categorize the customer which pattern which may work best for recovery
4. Feedback from Customers - By putting up feedback mechanism from the customers helped understand which technique would work best for the specific customer
 
With this holistic approach and targeted strategies, it helped the department to improvise on the overall debt 
recovery rates.