The Evolution of the Collection Department

Hi,
The collection departments of most companies have gone through very similar changes to their credit departments. In the past, when a problem existed on an account it was handled by someone who had the authority to deal with it and solve the problem. Today in many instances when one calls a collection department, one is talking to a customer service representative who has limited authority and is operating under generic guidelines on how to handle each call. It is often necessary to contact collection departments and talk to three or four customer service representatives before one finds someone willing to deal with the particulars of a specific situation. This often results in in the customers becoming frustrated and just paying the bill. Another method employed by corporations in order to save money, is to make access to collection departments very difficult. This is done by setting up a myriad of electronic options, giving the customers a multiple of generic choices, many times of which none apply to their situation. The frustration customers feel when treated this way often results in the customers ignoring their bill, and in the process, damaging their credit. Often time when customers make their way through a maze of generic electronic choices and finally get to a live person in the "collection department" they end up talking to a customer service representative who does not have the authority or ability to deal with their particular problems. The goal of the callers is to make satisfactory payment arrangements for a past due bill. If customer service representatives don't have the flexibility to work with the callers to achieve that end, it is imperative that the callers ask to talk to a customer service representative/ collection supervisor and hope that the supervisor can help find a solution to the problem. On occasion, it might be necessary to request to talk to their supervisor. In the past, when one talked to a collection department, all representatives had the ability and authority to deal with problems. As a cost saving measure, companies replaced most collection people with customer service phone representatives and only kept collection people as their supervisors. This change evolved over the last 25 years as a direct result of the increase in bad credit. Tomorrow I will talk about the effective way collection, credit and sales departments can work together.
Until then,
Alan