Collection calls · pre-legal, at portfolio scale
Work the whole portfolio,
not just the big files.
A handler can only dial so many cases a day. So the small balances never get called, and the pre-legal window closes on files that would have settled. Sono calls every open case, negotiates an arrangement inside your limits, and writes it back to the file.
Sono's AI collection call assistant is a voice agent that works a collection agency's pre-legal portfolio at scale — calling every open case in the debtor's own language, negotiating a payment arrangement within the limits the agency sets, logging every outcome to the case file, and escalating disputes and hardship to a human handler.
The problem
The desk decides
what never gets called.
Every agency runs the same arithmetic. A handler has so many hours; the portfolio has more cases than hours. So the book gets sorted by balance, the top slice gets worked, and the long tail gets a letter and a dialler attempt that nobody follows up.
Two things follow. The small files never recover, because the only thing that reliably moves them — a conversation — is uneconomic to have by hand. And the mid-size files that would have settled with one more call drift out of the pre-legal window into legal action, where recovery is slower, costlier and worth less.
Reaching a file early is the cheapest lever in the process: an arrangement won at 3 days past due costs 2.08€, against 5.02€ at 65 days. But that lever sits with the creditor, not with you. By the time a case is placed, the only lever left on your side is coverage — and coverage means volume, not triage.
The cost of waiting
Cost per payment arrangement, by days past due
By the time a file reaches an agency it is usually already in the expensive part of this curve. That makes coverage — calling everything, not just the top of the book — the lever you still control.
Sono · collection calls
The tail of your book is unworked commission.
Whatever share of each month's placements your handlers never call recovers nothing at all. Set your intake below to see what covering the rest of it is worth in commission — and what the calls would cost.
Commission on the unworked tail / year
On 1 210 050 € recovered for your clients
Your return per € spent on calls
Commission earned against call cost
Cases settled pre-legal / year
Files that never need legal action
This month's placements
At 25% coverage, 75% of everything placed with you this month never gets a conversation. Sono works that share on top of what your desk already does — it does not take the handler's cases away.
What the tail costs to work
Answer rate (48.9%), arrangement rate by case age, arrangement-to-payment rate (70%) and cost per arrangement (2.08–5.02€) are measured on Sono's 2026 European consumer-credit calling programme; past 65 days the rates are held at the 65-day figure, the last one measured. Applied to your inputs they are a model, not a guarantee for a different portfolio. Handler-desk cost assumes two 4-minute attempts per case at 83% occupancy, on Eurostat 2025 labour cost for administrative and support activities.
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How it works
From open case to payment arrangement
Sono works every file in the queue — tirelessly, at any scale, inside your rules.
Step 01
Calls every open case
Reads the queue from your collections platform and dials the whole portfolio on your cadence — including the low-balance tail a desk would skip.
Step 02
States the case properly
Verifies it is speaking to the debtor, gives the required disclosures, states the balance and its basis, and answers questions in the debtor's own language.
Step 03
Negotiates inside your limits
Agrees a date, or an instalment plan, within the terms your agency authorises — never beyond them. 70% of those arrangements turn into a payment.
Step 04
Writes back and escalates
Disposition, arrangement date, transcript and recording land on the case file. Disputes, hardship and insolvency go to a handler instead of a script.
The earlier a case is called, the more it converts — and the less it costs
Between DPD 3 and DPD 65 the arrangement rate falls by nearly two thirds — from 32.5% to 11.7% of answered calls — while each arrangement costs 2.4× more to win. Agencies that persuade creditors to hand files over sooner, or that run pre-collection reminders for them as a service, work the cheap end of this curve instead of the expensive one.
Compare
Three ways to raise
portfolio coverage
When an agency needs more of the book worked, the options are usually more people, more automated dialling, or a voice agent that actually holds the conversation.
| More handlers | Dialler & letter cycle | Sono | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio coverage | Rises with headcount, and only with headcount | High dial volume, but only the connects a handler is free to take | Every open case, every cycle |
| The low-balance tail | Uneconomic to work by hand | Dialled, rarely conversed with | Worked like any other case — cost per call doesn't care about balance |
| Cost behaviour | Fixed salary cost, paid whether the case pays or not | Cheap per dial, expensive per connect once handler time is counted | Flat monthly fee plus usage; does not scale with volume |
| Disclosures & tone | Depends on the handler and the hour of the day | Nobody is speaking, so nothing is disclosed | Identical on every call, in the debtor's own language |
| Audit trail | Recording plus whatever the handler noted | Dial logs | Full recording, transcript and structured disposition on every file |
Headcount buys coverage linearly and permanently. A dialler buys dials, not conversations. Sono is the only one of the three where covering the whole portfolio does not mean growing the desk.
The proof
Debtors don't just answer —
most commit to pay within 10 days
More than half commit to pay within 10 days — an average 23 days sooner than the longest term on offer. For an agency that is commission recognised sooner, fewer files ageing into legal, and a client seeing money move.
The unit economics
553€ in.
57,750€ out.
Per 1,000 answered calls, from Sono's own collections data.
Per 1,000 reached debtors
165 payments per 1,000 conversations — a 16.5% call-to-cash rate.
Call at 3 days past due instead of 65 and the same 10,000 accounts return 394,800€ instead of 203,350€ — nearly double, off the same book, at almost the same cost.
Read the full breakdownCompliance
The rules are configured once,
then followed every time.
The hardest part of supervising a collections desk is consistency. A voice agent has no bad days, no shortcuts and no unlogged calls.
Discloses what it is
Sono states that it is an AI voice assistant on every call, along with the agency identification and statutory wording your market requires, before anything else is discussed.
Respects contact limits
Calling hours, frequency caps, do-not-call flags, quiet periods and channel preferences are enforced per market and per case — not left to the handler's discretion.
Never oversteps the mandate
It offers only the terms your agency authorises, makes no threat of legal action it has not been instructed to state, and does not improvise around a debtor who pushes back.
Hands over the hard cases
Disputes, hardship, insolvency, vulnerability signals, third-party answerers and anyone who asks for a person are routed to a live handler with the context attached.
Logs everything
Recording, transcript, structured disposition and agreed terms are written to the case file on every call — so a complaint months later is answered from the record, not from memory.
GDPR by design
EU data processing, retention windows you set, and no debtor data used to train models. Data-processing terms and sub-processor detail come with the DPA.
What you get
Sono Collections
in practice
Every open case gets called on every cycle, including the low-balance tail that has never been worth a handler's time. Coverage stops being a function of how many people you employ.
Files that engage in the pre-legal window settle faster, cost less and recover more than files that go to court. Sono finds which ones will engage, on every case, before the window closes.
Sono absorbs the dialling and the no-answers. Your handlers spend their day on negotiated settlements, disputes and hardship arrangements — the work that needs a person and carries the margin.
Cross-border portfolios get called in the debtor's own language, with market-specific scripts and disclosure wording — without staffing a desk per market.
Full contact history, recordings and dispositions on every file give your creditor clients — and your regulator — a complete account of what was said and when.
Upstream of collections
The cheapest case
is the one that never arrives.
Creditors who call their own overdue accounts at day three hand over fewer, better files. Some agencies now run that pre-collection stage as a service on top of their mandate — same voice engine, different objective.
FAQ
Frequently asked
questions
An AI collection call is an outbound call placed by a voice agent on a case that has already been escalated to collections. It identifies the debtor, states the balance and its legal basis, answers questions, and negotiates a payment arrangement within the limits the agency sets — logging the disposition, the agreed date and a full recording against the case file.
Sono identifies itself as an AI voice assistant on every call and follows your scripts and statutory disclosure wording. It observes calling-hour restrictions, do-not-call flags and contact-frequency caps, and keeps a transcript and recording of every conversation for audit and complaint handling. Sensitive cases — disputes, hardship, insolvency, third-party contact, anyone asking for a person — go to a live handler rather than being pushed. Your compliance team configures those rules once; Sono then applies them on every call without exception, which is the part a human desk cannot guarantee.
All of it. A handler desk is capped by hours, so agencies prioritise by balance and the long tail of small files never gets a call. Sono has no such cap: it works every open case on the cadence you set, including the low-balance files that are uneconomic to dial by hand but still settle at scale.
It gets to them first. Legal action is slow, costly and recovers less than a voluntary arrangement, so most agencies would rather settle pre-legal. Sono makes contact attempts on every file in the pre-legal window, surfaces the ones that will engage, and reserves your handlers and your legal budget for the files that genuinely need them.
In a live collections programme, 48.9% of debtors answered and 23.5% agreed a payment arrangement, at an average cost of 2.35€ per arrangement. 70% of those arrangements turned into an actual payment: per 1,000 conversations that is 165 payments and 57,750€ recovered for 553€ spent — about 104€ back for every 1€, or 3.35€ per collected account.
No. It removes the dialling. Handlers stop burning the day on unanswered numbers and low-balance files and spend it on negotiated settlements, disputes, hardship arrangements and pre-legal decisions — the work that needs judgement. Sono does the contact volume; the desk does the cases that earn the commission.
Yes. Sono connects to your collections or case-management system via API or webhooks, reads the open case queue, and writes back every disposition, arrangement date, recording and transcript against the file. Scheduled CSV exchange works too, and most agencies are live within days.
Sono runs collection calls across European markets in the debtor's own language, with market-specific scripts, disclosure wording and calling-hour rules configured per portfolio. Agencies working cross-border books use it to cover languages they would otherwise have to staff or outsource.
Get started
Put the whole portfolio on Sono's call list
In a 30-minute demo, hear Sono work a slice of your own pre-legal portfolio — on your cadence, with your scripts, disclosures and arrangement limits.
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