Collection work can become frustrating and tedious from the constant draining phone calls. When your collectors are calling the same accounts over and over again and those accounts are not paying up, the work can drain your collectors. They don’t feel like they are making a difference in the company and can start feeling like they are running in place. This is never a good thing, because unmotivated collectors means less accounts get collected on. This is especially true if you have a smaller team doing a lot of work.

In order to get your collectors motivated again, there are a few tactics you can use to try and lift up their spirits and keep them on task.

PHONE CALL MANAGEMENT

A majority of a collection team’s time is spent making phone calls and taking notes. Depending on the size of your collection team, your collectors can be expected to make up to 50 phone calls a day, on top of all their other tasks. When a collector is pushed to their limits like this, it’s no wonder they may lose steam. Using a phone call management tool helps them to lower the total amount of phone calls they need to make a day. If a customer doesn’t answer, an automated voicemail can leave the details of their account. This breaks up the amount of manual activities your collectors need to make, allowing them to reach more accounts and do more meaningful work than just manual tasks.

AUTOMATED EMAIL

If you’re still sending out emails manually, this is a process that should and can be easily automated. If you have collectors sitting around copying and pasting invoice templates into an email to send to customers, you need to automate this process. This is a waste of your collector’s time and energy. You most likely hired these team members for a reason and using them to manually send email as opposed to helping create new collection processes to improve your accounts receivable isn’t encouraging anyone to do a good job.

ROTATE ACCOUNTS

It doesn’t matter what your job is, if you’re doing the same old task over and over and over again, it tends to get boring. And then you lose your motivation. If you have a team of 2 or 3, or even more, try rotating the collectors on and off certain accounts. Not only does it help your collectors to get a breath of fresh air, but it can also light a fire under your customers to pay up when they start dealing with someone new.

COLLECTION INCENTIVES

Create an incentive program to help motivate your collectors. This could be as simple as a team goal that results in lunch paid by the company, or individual goals that are rewarded with an Amazon gift card. The incentive program doesn’t have to be fancy, but just something that will give your collectors the extra push.