Collection Agencies And Internal Customer Satisfaction

Advice For
In-House
Debt Collection

Col­lec­tion Agen­cies And Inter­nal Cus­tomer Satisfaction

By Dean Kaplan

Col­lec­tion agen­cies need to be con­cerned about the sat­is­fac­tion of Inter­nal Cus­tomers. This is the third arti­cle in a four part series of arti­cles on inter­nal cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. This arti­cle focuses on defin­ing needs and require­ments for inter­nal cus­tomer satisfaction.

In the last arti­cle, we dis­cussed the need to clearly iden­tify who the credit department’s inter­nal cus­tomers are. In addi­tion, the func­tions of these depart­ments and their rela­tion­ships with other depart­ments must be fully under­stood. Finally, if a col­lec­tion agency has been hired to assist the credit depart­ment in its col­lec­tion efforts, the col­lec­tion agency must be brought into the loop to assure that all nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion is avail­able to the credit depart­ment as it com­mu­ni­cates with its inter­nal customers.

Once the cus­tomers and their func­tions and rela­tion­ships are under­stood, the next step is to clar­ify the needs and require­ments of these cus­tomers as they relate to the credit depart­ment. There are many valid ways to gain this crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of the inter­nal cus­tomers. One way is for the credit man­ager to talk with all its inter­nal cus­tomers and explain the func­tions of the credit depart­ment to the cus­tomers. Then it is up to the cus­tomers to tell the credit man­ager what is needed for the cus­tomer to do the best job pos­si­ble while man­ag­ing resources and com­ply­ing with the over­all company’s goals and objec­tives. The pos­i­tive about this approach is that the credit man­ager gives face time to all the cus­tomers, hope­fully build­ing rela­tion­ships and trust along the way. The neg­a­tive to this approach is that the data is gath­ered via con­ver­sa­tions. It may be hard for the credit man­ager to col­lect the data, write it all down, and sum­ma­rize it into action­able items.

Keep­ing inter­nal cus­tomers happy is of utmost impor­tance for col­lec­tion agen­cies and credit departments

Another tech­nique to col­lect the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion is to hold meet­ings where sev­eral cus­tomers come together and the same basic infor­ma­tion is exchanged. This is akin to the focus groups used by mar­ket­ing depart­ments to test prod­uct ideas. This may be a more effi­cient method for the credit man­ager because he or she can make the expla­na­tion of the func­tions of the credit depart­ment to sev­eral cus­tomers at the same time, and the mes­sage will be the same for all in atten­dance. In addi­tion, this gives the cus­tomers a chance to under­stand how their respec­tive func­tions fits into the credit department’s regime, and how their func­tions might relate to each other. It also gives the cus­tomers a chance to iden­tify dupli­cate efforts, or areas where com­mu­ni­ca­tion should begin. The pos­i­tive of this approach is obvi­ously time sav­ings as well as a chance for com­mu­ni­ca­tion across func­tional areas to begin, and rela­tion­ships and trust to be built. A neg­a­tive is the same as the face to face meet­ings: it may be dif­fi­cult for the credit man­ager to develop an action plan from the sub­jec­tive data collected.

A final tech­nique, which is less time dri­ven and more eas­ily tab­u­lated, is to develop an inter­nal cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey. While the sur­vey takes time to develop and write, it is rel­a­tively sim­ple to admin­is­ter. One neg­a­tive fea­ture is that the sur­vey lacks the per­sonal touch of face-to-face meet­ings. How­ever, using a sur­vey does not pre­clude the credit man­ager from tak­ing the time to meet with inter­nal cus­tomers prior to the sur­vey to explain the pur­pose of the sur­vey and obtain buy-in from the cus­tomers. An easy way to obtain this buy-in is to make the cus­tomers feel their input is val­ued and nec­es­sary. Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion comes from cus­tomers feel­ing important.

The final arti­cle in this four part series will look at the actual devel­op­ment of the inter­nal cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey. The infor­ma­tion col­lected is only as good as the ques­tions asked on the sur­vey. It is impor­tant to make sure the sur­vey ques­tions get the credit depart­ment the infor­ma­tion they need to sat­isfy their cus­tomers. Once again, it is also impor­tant for the col­lec­tion agency work­ing for the credit depart­ment and its debt col­lec­tors be informed of the find­ings of the inter­nal sur­vey to assure that they are pro­vid­ing the credit depart­ment with all the infor­ma­tion they need to sat­isfy the needs of their inter­nal customers.

Click here to go to the final arti­cle in this four part series Col­lec­tion Agen­cies And The Inter­nal Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion Sur­vey, which will be posted tomor­row. If you missed ear­lier arti­cles in the series, click here to go to the first arti­cle Col­lec­tion Agen­cies Work­ing For Credit Depart­ments
The Kaplan Group is a bou­tique col­lec­tion agency spe­cial­iz­ing in large (over $10,000) debt col­lec­tions due from busi­nesses. Founded in 1991, the com­pany has a stel­lar rep­u­ta­tion (A+ rat­ing with the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau) and is rec­og­nized as one of the lead­ing col­lec­tion agen­cies for results on large and com­plex mat­ters.

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