Expert Roundtable: Collector Training

More and more attention is being brought by collection agencies and those who represent them to the issue of frivolous law suits filed by consumers against collectors. CollectionIndustry.com thought that this would be the perfect time to assemble a panel of experts in the collection industry’s first line of defense against consumer lawsuits: training.

The panel we assembled consists of heads of training and training consultants from leaders in the collection industry. Included in the discussion were Greg Cappa from National Asset Recovery Services, Inc., Beth Cole from Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, Marie DeMarco from Account Solutions Group, Jill Jensen from Omnium Worldwide, and Bill Lindala from Premier Consulting Group.

Moderating the discussion was Brain Greenberg, Managing Director – Kaulkin Ginsberg Company.

The panel discussion is also available for download in PDF format. Download PDF (12 pages, 198kb)

Brian Greenberg: We’ve assembled a diverse group of collection professionals here today that I expect will offer a variety of perspectives on training and, for that matter, we’ll probably find some similarities among the groups as well. For your own benefit, the types of companies represented today include a contingency collection agency with near-shore operations, an agency that’s partnered with an India-based BPO firm, one of the largest collection law firms in the country which also purchases debt, a well-established and diverse U.S.-based agency, as well as an experienced training consultant to the collection industry.

With that said, let’s get started with the first topic. Describe your initial training process – initial and ongoing – and the time frames involved.

Jill Jensen: Let me start with the initial training. We really separate our initial training into two parts. We have a classroom portion, followed by what we call a “nesting” portion, which I think is probably a term that’s fairly familiar. On average, our different workgroups probably spend about 13 days between those two areas. Typically, it’s around eight days in the classroom and five days of nesting. Of course, that can vary. We have some workgroups where the requirements might be fewer total days. We have some workgroups that might train several months for some of the more complicated projects that we might work on. The coursework in the classroom covers five different categories. There is the orientation portion. After that we teach systems, compliance, and collection skills. We then do some client-specific training for each of the different workgroups. Each of our training classes is segmented by an industry or by a product type. So if someone’s working on an early delinquency-type product, they’re not combined with someone who might be working more of a bad debt portfolio.

Brian Greenberg: So the training is specialized by the type of work being done.

Jill Jensen: Yes, we do try to specialize it, and yet there’s some building blocks within these different programs that are very similar if not the same. But as someone progresses through the course, they tend to become more specialized.

We do testing and quality evaluation as we go through the courses. Associates must pass certain levels within the testing or the quality evaluation before they can move on to Operations. If they are not meeting those levels, there are a number of different options available. Some of them stay in nesting a while. Some of them exit. Some of them go for retraining and they might actually go back into the classroom portion, or at least parts of it. And it’s flexible. We really try to look at what’s happening with the associate. The process is set up so that most people will make it through. But if someone does not make it through, we do have some different avenues that we go down with different people.

The final part of the training process is what I call a turnover or handover process with Operations when people are passed out of the nesting stage. We actually have Training and Operations sit down and issue a small performance evaluation on each trainee. It gives supervisors the opportunity to say things like, “This person passed but may need additional coaching here,” or “Here’s what you want to look for,” or “These are the particular talents of this particular group.” Additionally, we have a specific group of full-time trainers that spend most their time both making sure that the curriculum and the content of training materials is successful in delivering the results they’re looking for, as well as delivering that training.

On an ongoing basis, we have some general employment training that takes place yearly and touches on issues like workplace violence, harassment and discrimination. This training is mandatory and we track the performance of the trainees.

When it comes to job-specific or operational performance training, it really varies by workgroup. We have some workgroups that are very formal — I can produce a calendar of what they’re going to do up-training on through the end of, say, 2005. We have other groups where it’s much less formal — they identify a need, work with our formal training group and get that training delivered to their team. A lot of the ongoing training, especially in those more informal groups, is really done by the immediate supervisors. We hold supervisors accountable in part for developing those skills at the desktop: continue to work on the nuances of the conversations and to make people perform better.

Marie DeMarco: I would say our company’s training procedure pretty much mirrors what Jill was talking about. To add to that, we do an annual skills re-verification through all of the ongoing training such as system updates and things like that. Additionally, we have annually tests to make sure that the messages have been clearly distributed throughout the company. Then the ongoing training and tests are audited by our Compliance Department to make sure that everybody is doing everything the same way. On top of the audit, we track the performance of our training through employee surveys. We have new employees answer a survey after their nesting period, after the second week. Then we pull them back in after 60 days of being on the collection floor to verify if everything that it was a smooth transition from training to the floor. We also survey the supervisors after they’ve had the trainees for 30 days to make sure that we are supplying operations with a product that meets their needs.

Jill Jensen: Marie, who does your annual skills re-verification – Training, or Audit or Ops?

Marie DeMarco: It’s my responsibility to create the form. I work with the senior management to put together a form that reflects the major changes that we want to make sure that everyone in our organization is doing exactly the same thing. For example, this year, there were 24 changes that we put together. That information is then disseminated to the supervisors that then test their associates on those skills. There is also a supervisor test that the managers have to facilitate, at the supervisor level, to make sure that the supervisors understand everything. So not only are the collectors re-verified, the supervisors are as well. So I work with the senior managers to come up with those items.

As our company grows — we currently have two different facilities and growing — it’s just harder to make sure everybody’s doing everything the same way.

Bill Lindala: I have a real quick question. Do you have more than one person that facilitates all of the training and ongoing stuff, or is it based on the number of collectors? It sounds like you’ve got different locations, so do you have different people doing the same thing at different locations?

Marie DeMarco: Here at ASG, we average about 20 new hires per class. I have two trainers associated with each training class, especially for the nesting period. My trainers were previously collectors and they have that specific collection knowledge, so the trainers do the new hire training. For the ongoing training, depending on what it is, the trainers might conduct it or supervisors and managers might conduct it. I try to get Operations, whether it is the supervisors or managers or senior managers, to facilitate the ongoing training. I will coordinate it, but they facilitate it. I think it gives a different edge, at least in our company, to get Operations involved and it benefits the trainees hearing it from the lead people. So it just depends on what the situation is.

Jill Jensen: Our class sizes are about one trainer per 12 associates. Up until recently, we had a lot of dedicated trainers per project, and that left us a little bit single threaded. Now we have a lead or content expert trainer for each given project, but we also are doing a lot more in terms of putting teams of trainers towards projects so there is always a backup, because one project may be hiring for class and another one may not. And then you turn around the next week, and they’re all going to be hiring. So we’re trying to make sure all of our trainers are fluent in multiple products or can lead multiple types of sessions. At this stage, while there still may be one person who is what we would consider the leader or the owner of the curriculum, we’re doing a lot more of that cross training. We also have Operations and supervisors come in. I agree with Marie; it gives it a lot of flavor for the trainees. And our trainers are kind of a mix of both experienced collectors and what I would call training experts. So we’ve got a combination of training folks.

Beth Cole: Here at Weltman, we have corporate trainers and actual collection trainers, so ours is broken down a little differently. It’s still very similar to what I’m hearing, except that the corporate trainers are responsible for the initiation training. They do things like give the history of the firm, go over customer service, job descriptions and evaluations, and teach some of the Outlook and basic computer skills that the new hires will need. They spend two days with the corporate trainer also going over compliance as well.

After that, the trainees go on to the collections training area where they spend another six days. That’s where we go over the specifics of what they’re going to be doing as a collector for the firm. Once they’re finished with the collection-training group, they will go and shadow in their specific unit where they sit with a supervisor to learn client-specific needs and standards specific to that portfolio.

We also have ongoing training. Our training for the collection side is set up in modules, but any time we can have refresher training done. We can bring people back in for certain specific modules that perhaps they’re struggling with. The corporate trainers also have a program called “Trainer Certification,” where we have maybe the top performers from different areas and departments of the firm that actually get trained on how to be a trainer. These people have been leaders and mentors in their respective departments and they come into a classroom setting, they learn how to do the training, and then they become a certified trainer within the firm so they can train specifics to their departments.

Brian Greenberg: Please describe your average cost to train a new collector, as well as costs for ongoing and refresher training and the factors that influence cost.

Greg Cappa: I think as Jill said earlier, there are two factors that really determine the cost of training. First is the project you’re training for. We have variances in sophistication of projects here, from your basic third party, contingency-based collection, all the way up to customer service projects. We’re doing a lot more things than just collecting debt. So the degree of difficulty in the project is obviously going to determine the time involved. We’ve got some projects that we could train in two or three days. We have some projects that take 30 days to train.

The other factor is the experience level of the person you’re hiring. If we hire an experienced third-party bill collector, they’re not going to go through two or three weeks of training. I think everyone would probably agree that after about the third day, a person with, say more than one year of experience, would be out on the floor. Typically, someone with experience will need to learn our computer system and the client-specific training for the portfolio they’re going to go on, and then they’re ready to hit the floor. But we do have some projects, as I mentioned earlier, that have a one-week initial curriculum, another week of system training, a third week putting all of those together, and then another week of nesting.

To try and determine a cost, it could be anywhere from 20% – 100% of a collector’s monthly salary. So I think as Jill mentioned, the complication of the project typically determines the cost involved. If it’s a real easy one, we can get somebody onboard, trained and on the floor pretty quickly. If it’s more sophisticated, you’re looking at a month of training.

As far as refresher training, we really try not to pull someone off the production floor and put him or her in training for another week, especially, only a month or two after they’ve started with us. We use the refresher-training model. First, we identify deficiencies in our agents in a specific area. Then we’ll put together a refresher class to get them to focus on that one deficiency that causes them to lag behind the other agents. I think we’ll all agree, being on the operations side of things, any time off the floor is costly. We’d love to be able to put everybody through a one-week refresher training six months after they’ve been hired but in the competitive industry that we’re in, we really can’t afford to do that. So we try to select the areas that need improvement, identify those agents that need the refresher training, and then conduct it and get them back on the floor. And then what may ultimately happen is if we can’t fix that deficiency, as Jill said, they may just exit.

Brian Greenberg: Greg, is there any difference that you’ve identified in training your collectors that are here stateside versus those that are in the Caribbean or any of your other operations?

Greg Cappa: Well, they’ve been doing debt collection for about five years now in the Caribbean, so we’re actually hiring people that have collection experience. But for the most part, maybe 50 percent of the people we hire have experience. Our training in the Caribbean focuses on teaching the trainees about credit. They certainly understand credit, but not to the degree that you would need to be a debt collector. The Caribbean’s more of a "cash on the barrelhead" society, and we have to educate them on how you get a credit card, how you pay it, and what a credit cycle means. They are not familiar with some of those factors. So it does add to the training time. We have experienced the same thing in our Latin America shop, where almost 90 percent of the people we hire have no collection experience. So it definitely does add to the training time, just due to the cultural differences.

Brian Greenberg: Right. Marie, how are you at ASG handling training as it relates to your new partner in India?

Marie DeMarco: We’re actually working on that as we speak. We have somewhat of an action plan or project plan in place. They’re actually coming here next week so that we can discuss it. Although they have collections in India, the culture barrier is our greatest concern. It’s very important to us that we be able to transfer our culture to the Indian collection environment. So right now, we are just selecting the managers to come over here and train, and we’re just going forward with that. So at this point, in the very beginning stages, I don’t know if I’m able to even articulate a specific training program for India.

Rob Yarmo: My advice, particularly to those considering going offshore, would be to understand that there are some significant cultural differences between the U.S. and operating offshore. Typically the learning curves are longer to get up to speed and be in a position to achieve U.S. metrics compared to a U.S. agency.

Jill Jensen: I think the training costs issue for Omnium is one of the things that I found when I joined this group — we just don’t have a good handle on. We do have a separate budget for the training staff. We do fairly well on direct costs; we don’t do very well on tracking indirect costs. And I don’t know that it’s any different for a lot of human resource groups or training groups, but I think trying to bring in more of a business perspective into some of the training so that it’s both effective and efficient, not just what feels good, and bringing the measurement piece into it is probably one of the opportunities that I think we have. I think that’s the biggest challenge.

Brian Greenberg: Does your training process change depending on the collector’s experience?

Beth Cole: I would have to say yes, it does. Initially, after the trainees have spent two days with the HR and corporate trainers for compliance, I start with an icebreaker to put them at ease and to also give me some useful information about their experience. It gives me an idea of their knowledge of collections, whether they’ve had first-party or third-party experience, and any additional relevant experience that they may have had in the collection industry or in the credit industry. Once I have an idea of their background, I decide at that point how in-depth we need to go into different topics that we cover during training. And it does vary based upon the experience level and the need of the student.

Marie DeMarco: Any new hire at our company, whether they have experience or not, all go through the same training process on the first week focusing on systems, the phones, all of that sort of stuff. We then test on these skills to verify that they have the skills necessary to do the job. The second week — the nesting period — we do a lot of Y-cording and side by side shadowing. We also do more on-the-job training. For an experienced collector, we might get them out a couple of days earlier, but they still go through the same process as somebody that does not have experience. If anything, in our location, we are heavily saturated with collection agencies, and we actually shy away from those people that have experience, believe it or not. They bring a lot of bad habits with them to our company. So if anything, we have to unteach them a lot of their bad habits.

Bill Lindala: Actually, Marie, I’m glad you brought that up. I was going to ask that question. As far as experienced collectors, especially if you’re in a market like you mentioned where you know all the agencies in the area and maybe know that a collector from Agency A versus a collector from Agency B might be bringing over a bad habit, if you choose to hire a collector from an agency that has bad habits, are you going to spend more time on the training for that collector?

Marie DeMarco: No. Well, really that would be hammered out in the recruiting process as far as whether they qualify. But then once they get into the training, it’s still the same process. We would not be spending any more time on that particular trainee. It would be just like another new hire. We just have to verify that they have the skills necessary and make sure, as far as compliance on the FDCPA side, that they are not bringing those habits with them. And of course correct them immediately if we do see anything.

Bill Lindala: So you’d rather mold than unmold?

Marie DeMarco: Correct. And in recruiting, we target more call center and banking employees rather than somebody that has collection experience.

Bill Lindala: Okay, wonderful. That’s what I was wondering. I know a lot of agencies take on that same philosophy, and I agree with that. In a lot of cases, it takes more time to unmold than it would be to mold somebody into what you want.

Marie DeMarco: We’ve just had more success with people from, for example, a banking environment. They seem to have more of a professional demeanor – they’re used to coming in on time, leaving on time, and if they do not do that, they know there are repercussions. If they come in from a different agency, if they were a good collector, some agencies let them sort of come and go as they please. So hiring a good experienced collector can be beneficial, but often there are some bad habits that come along with that.

Bill Lindala: Okay, wonderful.

Beth Cole: I just wanted to clarify. All of our new hire collectors do get the same training. It’s just the ones that don’t have as much experience, we may go into more examples, and we may do more role-playing than we would normally with someone that’s more experienced.

Brian Greenberg: Has your company utilized outside experts to complement your training efforts, such as sending collectors to seminars or having a third party train your collectors? And if so, what kinds of advantages/disadvantages have you found?

Marie DeMarco: We have not used any outside experts to come in and train our employees. At this point, I just haven’t utilized that. Our training regimen is very specific to our clients’ needs: our company, our computer system, etc. So at this point, I don’t feel that there’s a need to bring an external person in.

Greg Cappa: I’ve used something similar to that. I had some collectors on a particular account that needed a jumpstart. I feel that if you have the same personnel training everybody in your shop, over a period of time, everyone’s going to have the same perspective on collections – the philosophy of the trainer. That could be good. That also can be bad. It depends on the quality of the trainer. I think it’s a great idea to bring in people from the outside occasionally and give a totally different perspective on the same position. I’ve tried it in the past, and it’s been successful every time. Obviously, you have to weigh the cost involved to do something like that.

Brian Greenberg: That’s exactly the point: you can’t always reach everybody with the same message. And sometimes, it’s just to sort of spice up the training effort. This is just adding a little new life into that process and just another perspective that maybe isn’t already there.

Greg Cappa: Well, people relate to people differently. I could put four different people in a room, and someone will get a lot more out of training simply because they could relate to the trainer a little bit better. And unfortunately, no one can relate to everyone. You try and reach the masses, but you’re not going to reach everyone. Having someone come in from that different angle sometimes does spice things up a little bit.

Beth Cole: We utilize the ACA or NARCA for online training sessions and seminars, which both are excellent and very cost-efficient ways for us to get new ideas generated and share best practices. Both give us a creative edge to new perspectives and to see if there is anything we can change up. And we also try and incorporate different methods of training, such as audio. We play tape-recorded collection calls and have the trainees listen for things that they think went right, things that went wrong and what could have been done better. We use visual tools such as the projector. We try and implement different things so that it will appeal to all kinds of learners.

Jill Jensen: We probably do use some external resources, probably close to what Beth is describing. We have used some ACA online seminars, as well as some other commercial collection seminars. We really don’t have a lot of commercial trainer resources, so we have taken advantage of a lot of external resources that we may not have the time to create ourselves. We’ve used that for both ongoing and up-level type training. And the team seemed to really enjoy it. I wasn’t sure about the format, but they do like to have the external voice, whether it’s onsite or something coming across from the phone that gives them a different perspective.

Brian Greenberg: What types of training resources are available to your collectors on a daily basis, such as trade magazines and reference materials? For example, how are collectors kept abreast of changes in the law?

Bill Lindala: Although I’ve been in the collection business since 1990, and worked for a lot of different agencies, currently I actually run a consulting firm. So I’m not actually involved with an agency actively as far as being employed by one. But what I do is talk to a lot of agencies when it comes to situations like this and basically everything we’re talking about. And one of the main thoughts that I’ve always had is what materials do people have, the collectors specifically. It’s kind of like if you walk into a doctor’s office or into a lawyer’s office, you want them to know what they’re talking about, but you also want them to have some reference materials. If you walked into a lawyer’s office, and he didn’t have that shelf of books to look into just in case, you might question that. The same thing with a doctor.

The main resource, speaking of ACA, when it comes to consumer collections would be FDCPA manuals. They’re boring to read. A lot of people have no desire to read them, but if you have them available, you’d be amazed at how many people will read them. And the more they read, the more they know. Same thing with trade magazines, whether it be the Collector Magazine or any of the other millions of magazines that are out there catering to the collection industry. If you make those publications available for people to read, they’re going to be able to look at the articles, draw from what they read and ask questions — and that will make them better collectors and I think better employees.

Now as for day-to-day stuff, I wouldn’t expect that any collector would have the time to necessarily open the FDCPA manual and say, “Okay, this is why I can call you; this is why I can’t.” But if they have that manual available to them when they’re off their calls, they can look and they can do research, and I would encourage that. And I don’t really know what’s available in a lot of agencies, but what I’ve seen in a lot of cases is that collectors don’t have those resources available and they don’t necessarily feel involved in the process. If they want to research on their own, some people are shy and they don’t have that place to go. What do you guys do as far as materials and resources and that sort of thing?

Beth Cole: At Weltman, we have an internal Intranet site for our employees and it has a variety of different resources available on it: from skip tracing with links to different skip tracing websites, to interest calculators, departmental web pages with specific procedures for that specific department, benefits, newsletter, publications on banking and finance industry, credit industry – just all kinds of resources. It also has links to publications like Collector Magazine and tells them about conferences that our attorneys at the firm have attended with a summary of what was covered. So we have a wonderful resource internally here.

Brian Greenberg: Do you notice that the employees seem to enjoy that, having that resource?

Beth Cole: Yes. Actually, when I was new hire here, I spent time just looking on our web with all the different resources we have. I was coming in from a banking background. I thought it was wonderful, the variety of different resources that we had available at the collector’s fingertips.

Jill Jensen: We do something very similar to what Beth is describing in terms of the resources available to the collectors from an Intranet. From a compliance perspective, our internal Corporate Counsel Group does monthly newsletters to try and help keep people involved. And then we do try to put some materials – like trade magazines or books and such — in the break rooms and lounges. So we try to keep materials there as well to try and encourage it to be a relaxing place for people in their downtime to access materials.

Marie DeMarco: We also use an Intranet. As far as FDCPA training, I’d say our training is the first step. We teach on it. We test it. We have also broken it down to the state law level. In addition, we have our own internal policies regarding compliance. If there are any changes to the manual itself, we follow a data and information policy that governs the way in which we disseminate the information. So if a change is informational in nature, we would put it out on the Intranet and send it out through the computer system and post it around the office. If it were a minor change, such as an actual law update or an FDCPA change (that is what we consider a “minor” data change), we would need every employee’s signature to make sure that they are aware of the change. And then the third change is a major change. We haven’t had a major change recently, but major would mean that they would need to be retested or have two observations to ensure that they understand and they are fully aware of this new change, just to make sure that everybody understands the importance of it.

So the communication here is thorough, and it’s also audited through the Compliance Department just to make sure everybody’s doing everything the same thing. So the only thing I would add is the data policy that we have that affects dissemination depending on the severity: informational, minor or major.

Brian Greenberg: Greg, specific question for you: Given the fact that you’ve got a number of different offices, how do you keep up all the staff on the latest changes in laws and regulations?

Greg Cappa: Well, right now, with each office, it’s pretty specific in the type of receivables they’re working, so that hasn’t been an issue yet. That’s something we’re trying to centralize within our Training Department so that we are consistent. We have instituted processes so that we insure each agent is updated in each office.

Brian Greenberg: Does that apply as well to things like the FDCPA?

Greg Cappa: Currently, we do outbound, third party collections offshore. So the first couple days of training focuses on the FDCPA. And in fact, we kind of use that as a measuring tool to determine if we made the right hire. The first two days of training is all FDCPA curriculum-based training. For the agent to continue in training, they’ve got to pass an examination to move onto the third day of training.

Brian Greenberg: If a collector in your organization has committed a violation, have you found it to be collector-specific or has it been a training issue? And what have you done to prevent future occurrences?

Jill Jensen: I would say almost all of them (violations) have been collector-specific. We certainly do try to keep the materials up to date, and with some of the retraining we do, we think we try to stay ahead of making sure the training is current. When we do find an alleged violation, one of the things that we’ve done in the last couple of years is we’ve created kind of a three-pronged approach for investigation. The Operations Management, Corporate Counsel’s Office, and the HR Group (Associate Relations Staff), who is involved in progressive discipline, get together and review each alleged violation. And those three have to agree on whether there was a violation and the consistent application of the progressive discipline process. I think what it’s done is help to make our process more rigorous. We don’t have tons of trouble, but I think this has really helped us look at violations from a corporate perspective, a client perspective, and a performance perspective.

The other thing that we’re trying to do is to make sure that we’re teaching the people to think and to understand how to apply the law. I still find that many collectors, and even Operations Managers, just want a rule. They’d like to know, “Can I do it” or “Can I not do it.” And with the laws many times being vague, we need them to understand what the situation is or what their tone or their intent is if they have a particular talk-off and to make sure they can help police themselves as to what would be allowable or not. So those are some of the things that we’re doing in order to make sure that we’re staying violation-free.

Marie DeMarco: Jill, do you have a Compliance Department who is responsible for overseeing that?

Jill Jensen: It’s multiple prongs. We do have a Corporate Counsel’s Office. We don’t actually have a Compliance Department, per se. We have a Corporate Counsel’s Office who oversees any complaints that come in from an attorney or above level. We also have an Internal Audit Group that does regular internal process and desktop audits. The Operations team has its own quality audit teams. So there are a lot of folks that are looking at the quality of what happens. Each of those groups would audit phone calls at different levels of expertise and are really kind of checks and balances on one another, and they do calibration to make sure they are all looking for the same thing. But the primary responsibility for making sure there are no violations is with the Operations team. If there’s any type of violation that would result in any type of payment of funds, then those are allocated straight back to that operating center.

Marie DeMarco: I have actually two questions. So does your QA Department tape record the conversations? And, secondly, what happens with a violation? Does the QA representative address the employee directly, or do they go to the Operations Manager to addresses the issue?

Jill Jensen: We don’t tape record all calls. We rotate that and try to keep that as something we use for training purposes. But when QA is independent of the operations, if it’s found in that level, the feedback always goes back to the manager, and they are the one that shares it back. But again, there’s a defined process on how we handle that. There are also defined processes for when the manager doesn’t agree with QA’s results, and even if the collector doesn’t agree. I think calibration works fairly well so we don’t have tons of those.

Marie DeMarco: Just to add to what Jill has stated, here at ASG, we actually have a Compliance Department that is pretty much the main focus as far as making sure that we are compliant. Although the Operations staff monitor the phone calls, our Compliance Department is our checks and balances. We also have a remedial to ensure the offenses are not repeated. We have also found that most of our violators are in a collector-specific situation versus an overall training issue.

Beth Cole: Marie, I was just wondering, do you guys tape record your phone calls as well, or is it just somebody’s listening in?

Marie DeMarco: That is definitely a big issue here. Our Legal Department at this time feels that it’s an issue regarding state requirements, because certain states will let you tape record and certain states won’t. So at this time, we do not tape record. It’s just the Quality Assurance Department monitoring the phone calls.

Brian Greenberg: Have you noticed an increase in consumer advocates and attorneys that are targeting collection agencies for violations committed by phone? And if so, have you altered your training in any way to deal with the situation?

Greg Cappa: By phone, no. We get the occasional complaint, like every other agency does. However, what I’ve seen lately has been a trend towards collection letters – attorneys attacking our collection letters. Stuff like, "You’ve got a hyphen in the wrong place" or "This is all wrong."

We address these types of attorneys/advocates on Day One of training. The collectors understand that there may be some liability for them if, in fact, there’s a violation of the FDCPA. If someone does have an issue with the FDCPA or compliance, we do have him or her sign something that says they’ve been through that training to protect the company, that we’ve given this individual the training necessary and that they understand what the laws are.

As far as by phone, I haven’t seen it, maybe some other folks on this panel have encountered that type of situation. But for us, we have seen it with the letters. We recently had an ACA-approved attorney review every collection notice in our directory to insure we were in compliance.

On a similar topic, there was a periodical that just came out recently where there was a suggestion made that agencies band together to combat these frivolous lawsuits that keep popping up. As executives, we have that decision to make when you get a potential suit: it’s $1,000 to settle it or risk $5,000 trying to defend it. The principle of the matter says that you fight it, but the businessperson in you says, "Let’s just make this go away." And I think there are plenty of attorneys out there that are trying to make a living exploiting that business decision.

Jill Jensen: We have seen a change in that. We see many more consumers tape recording phone calls on their own and then calling back and alleging that they had been harassed or whatever. We have altered our training in that we now very definitely try to warn and scare the collectors that someone may be recording your phone call. Then it’s there in black and white, so don’t assume that if we didn’t hear it, somebody didn’t. So we are definitely changing the training to make sure that they’re very aware of that. We use specific examples that we never would have used to use. If somebody had an alleged violation, we’d never bring it in. We will tell them about the types of things that consumers allege and try to do. This is more to educate them on consumer tactics to try and get out of paying accounts. So we have changed.

Marie DeMarco: We have not seen an increase in our organization. Our Legal Counsel supplied to us the top 15 most common complaints or most common issues that would generate complaints. So we train that upfront, and there’s a sheet hanging in their cubicle also stating the top reasons for complaints. So hopefully that is one of the reasons why it hasn’t increased, but we have not seen anything here.

Beth Cole: We train all the collectors to be professional and courteous, regardless of the behavior of the debtor, and we tell them that they should pretend that that call is being recorded, so that they’re always going to be doing things properly. So that’s what we do during training as well.

Bill Lindala: I thought that the notices were kind of on the outs as far as people targeting those. But I know that it was a big issue back in the mid-1990s. Just about every agency you would talk to was sued, or at least approached by attorneys for notice violations. I look at a lot of the consumer message boards to see some of the topics that they’re talking about. The main thing I’ve seen seems to be the phone calls and the recording of the calls and allegations like, “a collector said this” or “didn’t provide that.” But I’ve always felt the notices are still the thing to really be concerned with.

But I think the main point is that consumers are just so knowledgeable now. It’s not that they were not knowledgeable before, but they’re more knowledgeable than they were even five years ago. There are a lot of consumers that are out there with websites available to them to do a lot of pro se claims and things like that. Even if you weren’t in violation, if there’s something that could be a violation, a lot of times, they send you an intent to sue, and you’ve got to defend it like Greg said. The business side of things says, “Spend the grand rather than five,” and a lot of people are getting wind of that. So my advice to a lot of people has always been that don’t give them a reason to look.

Greg Cappa: I think the debtors are more educated today and that is why there are more attorneys focusing on these types of potential violations. It seems like everywhere you turn, there are billboards and messages saying, "Were you contacted by a bill collector? Call 1-900-something and get advice on how to make the debt go away." It all goes back to educating the collectors from the beginning and insuring that your quality teams are monitoring for compliance.

Bill Lindala: And I’ve seen that, too. In a lot of cases, it has nothing to do with your training program. It’s just a person, himself or herself, just doesn’t think that they will get a violation. It’s an “it’ll never happen to me” mentality. They don’t realize that either a tone of voice or a certain word or how they say things could bring about a violation. So I think it’s good to scare them. It’s never good to motivate with fear, but you’ve got to have that in the back of their mind — the fact that they could be liable, along with the agency, so they should watch what they’re doing.

Rob Yarmo: I had the benefit of working with a near-shore company for 12 years prior to joining Global Vantage so I’ve experienced the perspective from both a near-shore as well as an offshore point of view. At the end of the day, it comes down to who has the ability to provide the highest net-back to the clients, with similar levels of client service. And the reality of the situation is that more often than not, depending on what product is going to an outsource partner, the majority of the time it’s going to swing to the advantage of an offshore outsourcer.

Brian Greenberg: Agreed. So it does come down to education and training at the end of the day.

Greg Cappa: Sure.

Bill Lindala: You bet.

Edited by: Patrick Lunsford