Does holding back a control group cost us collections?

What happens to the control group’s accounts

In live pairing (Stage 2), the accounts in scope are split at random. 80% are allocated by BestPair, each to an assigned collector, and 20% stay on your current routing as the control group. The split follows the Order Form, and so does the rule that the control group stays on your routing.

Those accounts are worked the way your floor works every account now: the same collectors, the same dialer and the same contact rules. People make every call. BestPair never dials, calls, texts or contacts consumers, and it does not change offers, scripts, whether an account is worked or any compliance rule. On the control group it changes nothing at all.

What it costs, and when

The control group collects what current routing would have collected. So the cost is the difference between that and what the same accounts might have brought in with pairing.

• If pairing beats your current routing, the control group’s accounts miss that extra for as long as they are held back. That is the whole cost.
• If pairing does no better, the control group costs you nothing, because its accounts were worked the way they would have been anyway.

You cannot know in advance which of those is true on your floor. Finding out is the reason the control group exists. BestPair does not guarantee a level of lift, and the control group is how the lift, if there is one, gets measured.

What the control group buys you

A clean comparison. Both groups run in the same weeks, on the same mix of accounts, with the same collectors. Tax season, a large new placement, a new campaign or a week of absences hits both groups alike. Compare this year with last year instead, and any of those moves collections on its own, so the gap no longer measures the routing. How a fair routing test works.

A fee you can check. Each month both groups are scored on dollars collected per account contacted. The fee is the greater of 10% of the extra and $2,500, where the extra is how much more the BestPair group collects per account contacted, multiplied by the number of BestPair group accounts contacted. Both groups’ results are on every invoice, and BestPair provides the supporting calculations on request. Once in any twelve-month period, your agency may also have the previous twelve months’ calculations reviewed by an independent accountant bound by confidentiality, at its own cost.

Protection from paying for gains you would have had anyway. Without a control group, a good month from the season or a better placement would look like a gain from pairing, and the fee would be charged on it. With one, the fee is charged only on what the BestPair group collects above the control group in the same month. A month with no gap costs the $2,500 minimum.

Why the split is random and stays fixed

A random split, made before anyone dials, means nobody can steer easier accounts into one group. Every account stays in its group for the whole test, whether or not a given call reached the collector BestPair chose, so awkward accounts cannot be dropped to flatter the result.

The Order Form also asks that at least 70% of BestPair group contacts reach the assigned collector. When fewer do, the comparison measures less of what pairing could do, because more of the BestPair group is being worked the old way. Early months can trail for this and other reasons, covered in why live pairing can trail at first. In the first 90 days of Stage 2 you can end it on 30 days’ written notice, set out in how long the contract runs.