In my past life, working for large corporations, everyone around me had a well-defined role.  There was a team in charge of the strategy, a team responsible for analytics, different set of folks who took the analysis and translated it into policy, then someone who took that and designed a product solution and wrote out a spec, a project manager that helped coordinate and, of course, the engineering team. I may have missed someone – but you get the sense.  Every six months or so, the division I was in would go through a reorg – to centralize, or to regionalize, or to better define the role of one of the teams above, or to split it into two, etc.  What drove the reorgs was rarely a change in company direction – more often than not, it was the overlap in the roles of multiple teams, or unhappiness by a subset of people about not being recognized, or being pigeonholed into a piece of the landscape that wasn’t attractive.

Now that I am part of the leadership team at TrueAccord, we’ve had some conversations about the best way to split the end-to-end responsibility of building and operating a technology platform between teams of people. As I ponder this topic more and more, I am becoming convinced that there is tremendous value in keeping roles broad and multifaceted – particularly in teams where employees’ average level of work experience is less than 10 years per employee.

Continue reading ““Redistricting with growth” – structuring and defining roles for junior employees” →

We know scammers roam free on the web, and we know they use people’s innocence to extort them for money. What’s easier than calling people in a tough spot and get them to pay you money they don’t really owe? It’s an ugly phenomenon. It’s also the reason why we always get our business customers to introduce us to their customers when a recovery process begins – there’s so much to worry about, why have to worry whether you’re being scammed?

Turns out it doesn’t stop there. Some of these scammers would rather not do the dirty work themselves, and they’re looking for someone to do it for them. We never imagined it works that way in recovery services, so imagine our surprise when we got an email from a previously unknown connection, providing us with the details of a debtor and a debt and urging us to work on it. Pretty aggressively so, I must add.

We won’t disclose private information so there’s not much we can say about Mr X, the alleged debtor. A quick investigation exposed the scammers, and we’re hopeful that Mr X won’t be troubled by fake collection calls. Given how easily his information was given, we’re concerned it’s not the last he’ll hear from fake collectors.

This case raises an important issue. People trade personal information too easily. Who knows where his customer’s details got exposed; too many companies feel that consumers’ information isn’t worth protecting once they owe money. This couldn’t be farther from the truth; if anything, sensitive information must be protected more rigorously when its discovery might embarrass consumers. Apparently, some players don’t care and will use any chance they have to make a dime. Luckily, this time they emailed the wrong company.

Finally, here are some words of advice:

• Contacted by a collector? Make sure you understand who that company is and how the debt was placed with them. One of the things we allow consumers to do in many cases is settle directly with their creditor, reducing their concern with paying us directly, before they get to know us.
• Got a suspicious email? Search for it online. Many scam catcher websites will warn you about common scams.
• If your identity was stolen or information about you is publicly available without your consent, it could be a violation of the law. Read about identity theft in the FTC’s website, and be vigilant about sharing your information with risky websites.

Did you get fake collection calls or emails? Tell us!

Many businesses, especially web based ones, live and die by customer acquisition and growth. They invest money and time in new ways to attract new users to their service, while under investing and sometimes neglecting retention efforts. While growth is important, retaining customers is a much more profitable activity – active current customers spend more, and are more likely to use other services your offer. Within that group of current customers, customers who churn sometimes provide you with the most important feedback.

Why do customers churn, and end up owing you money? There could be many reasons, and often times the least of which is some malicious intent on these customers’ part. Some find that your product wasn’t what they expected; some have billing issues; others had a negative service experience. What do you gain from talking to these customers?

1. They are often your most vocal critics. While that criticism is hard to listen to or read, and sometimes even exaggerated, it stems from a genuinely bad experience. Each customer who’s willing to talk to you represents dozens, maybe hundreds of others who disappear without saying a word. Listen to the content rather than the style, and you’ll discover a plethora of relevant product and process feedback.
2. They care. Some unhappy customers will pay your dues then disappear off your platform forever, without ever voicing their concerns. Some of your defaulted customers care enough, feel strongly enough, that they opt to not pay and get in trouble with you. Winning a customer like that back potentially wins you a strong brand advocate.
3. They owe you money. Bottom line, there is revenue to be recovered by reconciling with churned customers. It starts with the money they owe you, but their life time value, if won back as customers, can provide much higher ROI on recovery activities than you may intially think.