Steve Coyle
When I train new card collectors many of them suffer from either a lack of assertiveness (the ‘rabbits’) or an abundance of aggression (the ‘tigers’). The rabbits feel uncomfortable asking cardholders to pay. Instead, they ask cardholders how much and when they can pay. In the process, they lose control of the call which results in less money collected. In contrast, the tigers want to teach cardholders a lesson. They tell me things like, “It’s their own damn fault if they went crazy with the card.” In the process, they damage relationships, also collect less, and expose the company to legal risks.
As a new collector, I was a rabbit. I felt I needed to be excessively nice to people. I politely asked them to pay and I’d let them set the negotiating amounts or ‘anchors’. At the end of the month, I had made many new debtor friends, but I also had one of the lowest dollars collected on my team. My debtors were paying me as they pay their own friends.
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