by Bernie Hydock, Comtech Collect!

Welcome to the new 24/7 collection office, where automations not only optimize the work of your operators during the day, but also keep working long into the night executing scheduled tasks, gathering and exporting data to letter and texting services, creating reports, backing up your data and more.  The resources that must be allocated to purchase and implement additional automations or new software will be repaid handsomely in the long run by improving your workflow, and increasing the meaningful contacts your operators will make.

At Collect!, we recommend that you review the entire landscape of automation available within and through your software when you are setting up a new system. This allows you to take full advantage of available technology. We find that our users value a wide feature set. If they do not begin their relationship with Collect! by using every automation, they make increasing use of the solutions built into the software as they optimize their workflow and grow their business.

1. Scalability & Segmentation – Rather than individual debtor contact events, automation allows  you to segment and program multiple and varied contacts early in the collection cycle. This allows you to quickly resolving many accounts and allows your operators to focus on accounts that will benefit most from human interaction.
2. Consistency – Rather than the inevitable omissions that occur with human operators, automation ensures that tasks are completed for the entire target data set, often long after you and your operators have left for the day. A quick review of activity logs or reports the next morning will confirm that the scheduled tasks were completed.
3. Standardization – Instead of individual operators applying company protocols, management can implement workflow protocols for the company, departments, or groups of accounts. This way a wide variety of complex and segmented event plans can be applied to your accounts, saving a great deal of individual decision making.
4. Efficiency & Economy – Instead of your operators needing to initiate and execute every interaction, your operators can do what they do best – collect! Through automation, our operators have been freed from routine tasks and routine decision making, leaving them free for meaningful one-to-one human interactions with debtors. Through automations, your operators are working at their highest level of impact, instead of having to complete necessary but routine communication tasks.
5. Immediacy – Once your operator obtains payment commitment from a debtor, automated payment systems and e-signature systems are powerful tools in your operators’ arsenal. These tools allow your operators to take advantage of the relationship they have created to commit the debtor while they are focused on the task and are emotionally committed to the resolution of the debt.
6. Relevancy – Consumers live in the same increasingly technological world and their communication preferences change with the times. By communicating using the most popular methods – think texting (maintaining compliance, of course) – your communication is more likely to elicit a prompt response.