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Executive Q&A with Aspect Software Customer Cavalry Portfolio Services

Steve Anderson
Executive Vice President & CIO

Name of company — Cavalry Portfolio Services
Business process — Customer Service and Collections
Number of centers — Four contact centers
Products in use — Aspect® Unified IP™

1. What do you like most about overseeing the contact center activities for your business?
   I think the thing I like best and find the most exciting is when we get to implement new technology and experience how it positively impacts the contact center, our agents and customers.
2. How have the collections challenges of your business changed in the last several years?
   There have actually been quite a bit of new challenges in the collections space due to increased focus and new laws. This has increased the possibility of potential litigation. As a result, we have had to look at everything we’re doing and revamp the flow to give collections a more customer service focus based upon creating a win-win for everyone. We have developed processes that are based upon trying to do the right thing for the customer.
3. How is your organization successfully addressing these changing collections requirements?
   We’re very focused on trying to work out something that is more budgetary for the customer. These accounts have been collected on in the past before we have acquired them. Most of the time the customer really would have liked to repay but could not afford the terms. So it’s about attempting to create a situation in which they can repay, without making a detrimental impact on their lives. As a result, we win by getting the accounts resolved and they win by getting a payment plan that’s within their means.
   
   To address these changes, we have increased our call recording program. Three times a week we have coaching sessions with the collection agents reviewing both positive and negative calls to help them figure out what they could have done differently. We use our recording software quite a bit – we actually record 100 percent of calls. And when we go into the coaching sessions, the agents and supervisors never know what call they’re going to get, so it increases the focus on reviewing a whole array of collections interactions. It’s been very useful for improving the process and the customer interaction.
4. What feedback have you received from your customers as a result of these new customer service initiatives?
   We have very few complaints, and have seen disputes and compliance issues reduce. We’ve also received some positive feedback. No one likes debt collections of course, but every so often we receive nice notes from customers about how our agents handled the situation and helped resolve the issue.
5. How do you positively motivate your agents?
   One of the things we did was put them on the phone with more right-party connects per day. We took the voice portal piece of Aspect Unified IP for our outbound calls and leveraged the text-to-speech capability to say “is this such-and-such? If it is, press 1”. So we’ve been able to keep the agents motivated by keeping them busier with successful calls.
6. What one piece of advice would you give to other contact center professionals about achieving success?
   I really think that the biggest piece is try to anticipate the direction your business is going to go in the next couple of years and implement your technology and training programs to complement that vision.