The Art of Quality Debt Collections

Book excerpt: In many respects, collecting debt is a negative job—a fact that all credit risk professionals must be sensitive to. The typical collector may attempt 120 calls a day and speak to 36 customers, and then gain a kept promise from just half of those 36 customers he speaks to. This means the collector has just 18 kept promises and 102 negative results. An 85 per cent negative response rate translates to seven hours of negative feedback in an eight-hour day. This book offers the epiphany that great customer service in debt collections yields far greater kept promises than the above number. Consistent reiteration and coaching of the collections team about the importance of quality has always delivered a 25 to 35 per cent higher performance than the average. There are tips in this book that help you improve collection performance by embracing quality service. This is tried and tested in my career, and this is what this book reiterates.