DEBT COLLECTION
SPECIALIST

WHAT IS DEBT COLLECTION SPECIALIST?

Debt collection is a very time-intensive process. If you do it in-house, it’s expensive, frustrating and distracting, but if you outsource debt collection to a third party collection company (or individual), you end up losing a high percentage of the debt in fees. It’s also risky, because you might be assigned a debt collector who is rude to your clients or too passive. So, what if you could get the best of both worlds… and outsource collections to an offshore team member instead.

It’s not surprising that businesses have been turning  outsource debt collection since the late 1990s. Indeed, debt collecting (aka ‘general collections’) was a big part of the customer service work that started the entire BPO industry . Back then, the most commonly outsourced tasks were billing and invoicing  and those tasks are still very frequently outsourced today. But naturally, as the industry matured, outsourced collections work for other lines of businesses emerged, including financial services (e.g. credit cards and loans) and professional services.

Like an in-house debt collection team or a third party company (or freelancer), and offshore debt collection specialist is responsible for:

  • Monitoring accounts to identify outstanding debts
  • Investigating historical data for each debt or bill
  • Finding and contacting clients to ask about their overdue payments
  • Taking actions to encourage timely debt payments
  • Processing payments and refunds if necessary
  • Resolving billing and customer credit issues
  • Updating account status records and collection efforts
  • Reporting on collection activity and accounts receivable status.

But unlike other outsourced options, an offshore debt collector is part of your permanent team, so they get to know your business inside out, and they treat clients in line with your internal policies. You maintain control over the process, and your local accounts team can get on with their jobs.

What’s more, you can offshore the role for a more affordable rate than outsourcing to an expensive third party, so it doesn’t cut into your margin. And best of all, those savings do NOT come at the cost of service quality.  Not only are they highly qualified and experienced at working with American, Pillipian, Canadian and European companies, they’re also well known for their fluent command of spoken English. This is critical because they need to be able to read the nuances of the client interaction and speak with the right level of assertiveness to get the message across. In addition, because the  culture focuses on courtesy and respect, they’ll follow your process with the perfect combination of firmness and politeness, to get those overdue invoices paid.

Debt collecting experience

Debt collection specialists are usually experienced in more than one line of business. In fact, it’s quite uncommon to find someone tied to just one specific line of business.

 

  • Junior– A debt collection specialist is considered junior if he/she has less than 1 year of relevant experience.
  • Intermediate – 1-2 years of relevant debt collection experience is considered intermediate.
  • Senior – Senior debt collection specialists have 3+ years of debt collection experience.

Debt collecting tools

The most common tools used by debt collectors are their employer’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool – used for leads management and financial transactions. These tools are often internally developed because they handle and store sensitive data pertaining to customers’ personal information, credit activity and history.

It’s natural for companies to allocate part of the on-boarding period to training new hires on their internal tools. For experienced candidates, minimal training is required as they’ve typically used a lot of CRMs, so they usually get up to speed very quickly.

Tips for employing debt collection specialists

It takes a minimum of 4 weeks to hire an outsourced debt collection specialist.

Some clients prefer a debt collection specialist to have experience in their industry or business domain. But beware that this can increase the recruitment time. Also note that this experience isn’t always necessary. An experienced debt collection specialist can adapt quickly to the debt collection processes of any business. If you allocate time to conduct a brief training session on your product or service, results tend to exceed expectations.

Establishing collection targets and other key performance metrics (KPMs) at the outset is important. KPMs during the first 60 days of employment should be different from ongoing KPMs (to accommodate the early learning curve).

As in any collection or sales environment, a commission-based incentive system is expected by debt collection specialists.

A typical debt collection team consists of a group of debt collection specialists reporting to a team leader. Team leaders usually come from the ranks (from senior agents) as this is the career progression in a normal operation.