Consulting and in-house training
Late in 2006, a large Australian business moved its collection call centre to India. Early in 2007, Hattaways got a call from an executive at the company. The call centre was collecting about the same amount of money as the Sydney collection team had, but upsetting customers in droves. "Would Peter Hattaway be prepared to fly to India in the next few weeks to provide some training that would solve the problems?"
Listening to calls, we found that about 15% resulted in an angry customer. It also turned out that the new team was only capable of collecting "easy cases"; they had no skills for collecting hard debts.
The core problems were the related issues of listening to and understanding customers. "Listening" problems can be anything from deafness to lack of empathy - there are dozens of potential causes. Fortunately Peter was able to listen to calls before he travelled to India, identify the major issues, and put together training. Over a period of a week, he put the 80 or so collectors and managers through the training. Improvements were immediate and dramatic.
Why bring us in for consulting or in-house training?
Over the course of hundreds of assignments, naturally
we have solved problems that most credit managers of
most businesses haven't seen. At the heart of our most interesting consulting and training challenges lie needs and problems which the business concerned has realised it can't easily solve, or solve well, on its own. If your business has such a problem, call us - 1800 127285 (from Australia) or 0800 128500 (from New Zealand), or email peter@hattaways.com
In 2008, many businesses are struggling to collect debts. There are new challenges ahead. Many of those working in collections were not there during the hard years which followed the 1987 share market crash. If your credit operation faces problems that require an outsider's view or input, we can help.
Some examples of other interesting credit management assignments
Case 1. A business was very successful and had risen to a dominant position in its industry. However, its credit management was lax and disorganised. Its small customers had always used it as something of bank. Now, a new CFO was trying to change the credit management culture of a business which didn't change easily, and whose customers strongly resisted the change. This type of "change of credit culture" is something we have seen many times before, but the staff involved didn't know how to handle it. We provided training for the staff and advice on minimising the distress for all involved.
Case 2. A commodities trading business knew a lot about dealing with risk, but not so much about credit risk, some of which was only "contingent" credit risk. For example, if the market moved, a counter-party that had committed to a contract at a certain figure might find that what it had bought was now only worth half that. The difference in price might be $500,000. If that happened, there was a risk that they wouldn't pay, or couldn't pay.
Two groups within the commodity trading business were at loggerheads over how to manage the risk from a corporate governance perspective. The CFO called in a large accounting firm to break the deadlock but found their solution unconvincing, so called in Hattaways. Our solution was put to the board of directors and became policy.
Case 3. A business knew that to survive it had to move into a different market. However, the new market had higher credit risk and the business's existing collection structures and processes - the way they had always done it - might not cope. They planned a review. However, they needed someone from outside of the business who understood the way this sort of debt was handled elsewhere and could help them to fit it into their relatively unusual business model. It called in Peter Hattaway to provide that independent view.
Case 4. Flaws in a company's billing process meant that the rates for some customers were interpreted wrongly. Often the errors were only discovered years later by which time the customer owed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. At that point the company tried to back-bill the customer. The process of talking to these customers and resolving the matter was haphazard and largely unsuccessful. At best, the company achieved solutions which were not consistent with the solutions reached for other customers.
The company needed a process which was fair and consistent, took into account the potential public relations and legal issues, and collected as much of the millions of dollars outstanding as possible. Hattaways provided a report which set out such a process.
Four things about us
Hattaways Credit Management Training occupies an important niche in the credit industry in Australasia. We specialise in training for the industry and we believe, with some justification, that no-one spends more time and effort on the development of course materials than Hattaways.
To keep abreast of developments in the law, we produce the Australian Credit Management Law Bulletin and the New Zealand Credit Management Law Bulletin. These summarise recent cases of relevance to credit staff and are available free to anyone in the credit industry.
Our most popular public course is our Psychology of Credit Management course. This is a one-day seminar which takes what psychologists know about persuasion and applies it, along with a great deal of practical wisdom, to persuading customers to pay over the phone.
All our courses carry a money-back guarantee
Wisdom from the guru
We know of some credit management operations that keep a book (some use a whiteboard) in which they write down some of the funny or "interesting" things customers say. In one business there is a regular competition to see who has been called the worst name. (Obviously, you’re not supposed to provoke people to anger so that you win the competition!) Things that customers say in the heat of anger are often funny when you look at them afterwards, even though the situation may have been stressful at the time. When we tape calls as part of the training process we find that the wild and... (Click to continue)
Meet the team
Alan Liddell LL.B. B.A. presents our Law of Credit Management seminars in New Zealand. He is the principal of Tauranga law firm Capamagian Liddell and a leading expert on the Personal Property Securities Act.