At an early age, we are taught about proper manners. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ are hammered into us
at home, and then when we go to school, or get our first job, we are taught to
defer to positions of authority such as teachers or managers. If we work in sales, we are taught ‘the
customer is always right’. Whether we
aware of this or not, we have a strong social preference to be deferential to
other people.
When I started in the collection industry, I worked with
people yelling at debtors and banging their phones on the desk – it’s
ridiculous, but sometimes people paid these crude attempts to collect, mostly
from fear. It’s still an underlying
tactic in our collection industry today with front-line collectors, sweat out
periods for payment in full, and so on.
I’ve always thought that authority is more important than
fear, and creating a strong sense of authority is key to presenting a debt properly,
which will result in payment. However,
we need to remove some of our words of servitude and deferential language from
our collection vocabulary.
‘Please’
When you ask someone to do something with the word please,
you are asking someone to do something as a favour, as a voluntary act. A lawyer would not ask you to please pay a
judgment, nor would a bank ask you to please make your mortgage payment on
time. In almost every case, this word
should be removed from your language.
Because we are in a position of authority, we can establish that we are
withholding a negative rating from a credit bureau, alleviating interest from
accumulating on an account, or withholding legal action when it is necessary.
Yes/No Questions
This is a subtle trap – if you ask a yes/no question like ‘can
you pay this bill’, you are passing authority and control to the consumer. You are implying, by asking a yes/no
question, that they have authority over your actions and decisions on the
account. These questions should be
replaced with A/B questions, such as ‘would you like to resolve this account,
or shall I report it to the credit bureau?’, which implies your authority, and
directs the consumer to understand that there are a select number of outcomes
that they can expect from a collection effort.
‘Thank You’
Once again, a lawyer would not say thank you to a consumer
resolving a claim in pending litigation, nor does your credit card company send
you a thank you postcard every time you make a payment. Saying ‘thank you’ is a sign that you are
thankful or grateful for the actions of a consumer, and should be removed from
your vocabulary. In fact, if presented
properly, a consumer should be thanking you for being fair and reasonable with
them, withholding action, and working with them to resolve their account if
presented properly, and you can respond with ‘you’re welcome’.
Conclusion
Please understand that I do not condone or promote rudeness,
threats, intimidation, or other overly aggressive collection tactics. What I am saying in this article is that
using words of servitude sends a mixed message to a consumer that you are
attempting to collect from, and undermines the authority a collector wants to
establish. You can be perfectly pleasant
and reasonable with consumers, while negotiating with them, without the
language traps I’ve described above.
If you are a fellow credit and collections industry
colleague, and want to discuss collection techniques, or are a client who want
to discuss our approach to collecting debt, which we refer to as the APPRAISE
process, as always you are welcome to give me a call or drop me an email – I’m
always happy to discuss the science and artform of collecting.
Thanks kindly,
Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data and Credit
Cambridge, Ontario
226-946-1730
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