Making your First Impression Count with Consumers

Collection agencies can better deal with recession, increase agent productivity and reduce complaints at once. These seem at odds, but by focusing on your initial contact you can score the trifecta.

Collectors compete for “Cookie Jar Share.” If you sound like every other collector, you will get the same or less than everyone else. Like “The Bachelor,” you are one of a dozen trying to stand out. In this economy, collecting is like sales, and you’re selling the road to a brighter future.

The First Impression

All Right-Party Connects (RPC’s) are not equal. The Initial Right Party Connect (IRPC) is your only chance for a first impression.  Here’s my Take Five on the IRPC:

1. The majority of regulatory complaints are generated by the first contact, not subsequent calls.  Great agencies spend most of their time monitoring these contacts.
2. The best collectors spend much more time on IRPCs than other calls. They patiently engage objections, build rapport and explore solutions. Great collectors can rush the 15th contact with a consumer who repeatedly fails to make arrangements.  
3. Poor collectors fail to distinguish between IRPC’s and other contacts. They rush to judgment about the consumer and rush to the next account.  
4. A bad first call leaves long odds to ever maximize liquidation on that account. Weak agents can destroy the value of a portfolio by touching more IRPC’s than good collectors. While too few RPC per agent, per hour is bad, too many per agent can be much worse. If you cannot monitor this through your collection application system or dialer, you have a problem.
5. IRPCs are where revenue goals are met and competitive battles are won. Managers who allocate the most time to activities that most move the needle are the most successful. It’s classic 80/20, only better. Perhaps 5% of a day’s RPCs are IRPCs, and they drive 80% of your success.

Maximize the IRPC

These are my Pick Six ways to improve that first impression and increase your “Cookie Jar Share”:

1. Use scoring and skills-based routing to steer the highest potential accounts to the best collectors. The best collectors change not just month to month but week to week, day to day, and even hour to hour. Can you and your system?
2. Direct QA resources to target the IRPC, especially for new collectors.  If a collector has bad habits, poor skills, or is inclined to stray from FDCPA, it will most likely occur on IRPCs.
3. Direct Collection Managers to invest most of their coaching on the IRPC. You don’t have to boil the ocean to markedly improve collector skill levels. Focus where the teachable moments are most meaningful.
4. Track IRPC’s for each agent and the results. Collectors who cannot convert IRPCs into acceptable arrangements can tank your revenue and competitive positions.
5. Loosen time standards for an IRPC. Customer service reps turn over calls quickly, but they are also trained to slow down when with the best customers, like Gold or Platinum airline passengers. IRPCs are our best customers. They have the highest potential and deserve the best effort.
6. Encourage your collectors to honor the IRPC for the significant event that it is. Have them raise a hand, a flag, whatever it takes to separate in their minds the IRPC from other, less productive contacts and make sure their manager knows they are engaging in a high return activity.     

Chief Marketing Officer for LiveVox and chairman and founder of Fidelis Recovery Solutions, John McNamara is a 25-year industry veteran. John was previously COO for AMO, SVP of Operations for Nationwide Credit/ACB and VP of Operations for United Recovery Systems. He was recently awarded the industry’s Kurt Swersky Award.