Large clients often assign hundreds ( even thousands) of accounts to a collection agency in one go. This large batch is usually their past-due inventory accumulated over the years.
Suppose a client submits a batch of 1000 accounts to the collection agency. These accounts are assigned to multiple debt collectors who will start sending collection demands or making phone calls to your debtors. All your 1000 accounts are acted upon in a matter of days. What happens next catches most clients by surprise.
Roughly one hundred concerned debtors will begin calling the client directly ( to pay, dispute the debt, complain, or other reasons). Although (in most cases) the debtor is directed to call the collection agency and not the client, a small percentage of debtors still call the client ( say 10% of the total assignments).
The front-line person in the client’s office receiving these debtor calls quickly gets overwhelmed (at least temporarily. say for a week). This high inbound call volume catches the client by surprise.
Although the client will collect a lot of money quickly, they will surely need additional hands to cope with these debtor calls and inform the collection agency about the payments they received for these accounts. You must also post an update in your internal accounting software (like Quickbooks).
There are two ways to handle this situation:
- Before a client submits a large batch of accounts, they should dedicate more resources for inbound calls for at least a few weeks till the inbound call volume tapers down to a nominal level. This is the preferred approach.
- Assign only 200 accounts to start with. This will keep your inbound call volume low, then increase/decrease the submission size the following week.