A Foundation of Training Building for New Heights in Your Collections

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A Foundation of Training Building for New
Heights in Your Collections

• Randy Kamm
• The CBE Group, Inc.

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Session Description A Foundation of Training

• This session provides examples of how a third
  party collection firm hires, trains and motivates
  its collectors and management team to maximize
  collections, maintain compliance, enhance
  customer satisfaction, minimize complaints and
  reduce turnover.
• With training resources more limited than ever
  in the government revenue agency environment,
  its increasingly difficult to operate and
  maintain an effective, motivated and productive
  collection team.
• Use these ideas to help organize, build and
  sustain a training and development environment
  that will help you reach new heights in
  collection even in these challenging budgetary
  times.

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Good to Great

• When asked for the top five factors
• that led from mediocrity to excellence
• one leader summed it up
• One would be people,
• two would be people,
• three would be people,
• four would be people
• and five would be people.

Jim Collins, Good to Great
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Turn the flywheel!

• Good to great comes about by a cumulative
  process
• step by step, action by action, decision by
  decision, turn by turn of the flywheel that
  adds up to sustained and spectacular results.

Jim Collins, Good to Great
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Row, row your boat!
If you could get all the people in an
organization rowing in the same direction, you
could dominate any industry, in any market,
against any competition, at any time.
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
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Collections isOne Heart, One MindOne Payment
at a Time!
Anonymous
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Success Factors for hiring, developing and
motivating collectors

• Building for new heights in your Collections
• Know what you want to build
• Choose people who fit
• Provide solid footing with effective training
• Build strong leaders to offer support
• Maintain, repair, enhance continuously

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Know what you want to build

• We want to achieve exceptional results in every
  aspect of our operation and service
• Constantly stronger collections
• Excellent customer service
• Superior compliance
• Zero complaints
• Much enhanced employee retention
• We want every employee to understand how his or
  her actions help us achieve exceptional results
• We want every employee to know we want to help
  them succeed

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Do your employees know the plan?
If your people dont know what theyre being
asked to do, what you do as a manager wont
matter. Even Alice in Alice in Wonderland,
learned that. When she came to a fork in the
road, she found the Cheshire Cat sitting there.
She asked him, Which road should I take? Where
are you going? asked the cat. I dont know,
said Alice. Then it doesnt matter, the cat
was quick to reply.
Ken Blanchard, Whale Done
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At CBE we will

• offer a life preserver of help and hope to each
  other, our clients and customers. We will all be
  committed to doing the right thing!
• Being a collector is a tough job
• Keeping collectors engaged and productive is
  essential for strong collection performance,
  superior customer satisfaction and peerless
  compliance

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CBEs Core Values

• Integrity, Respect, Innovation, and Continuous
  Improvement
• Provide a common language for all employees
• Point to expectations
• Clarify what is most valuable to the organization
• Drive our people to do the right thing because
  they receive respect, understanding and support
  within the CBE organization

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Do the Right ThingEvery Day!

• We take care of our people so theyll want to and
  are able to do the right thing on the phone,
  for our clients, with each other, and in our
  community
• Well generate exceptional results because we
  treat consumers with uncommon respect and
  professionalism
• Well change the perception of debt collection
• Well create a new collection paradigm built on
  our Core Values

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Integrity

• The ripple starts with me!

We conduct our business in accordance with the
highest standards of professional behavior. We
are accountable to live up to our commitments. We
are in a climate of open, honest, and ethical
behavior in all of our interactions with each
other, clients, vendors and the public
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Respect

• Every person matters!

We always treat others as they would like to be
treated. We believe it is vital to capitalize on
each individuals unique talents and honor
diverse work styles. We operate in a climate of
openness and trust in which each of us freely
grants others their entitled respect,
cooperation, and decency.
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Innovation

• Riding the wave!

We accept change as the rule, not the exception,
and create an environment in which individuals
thrive and creativity is valued. We anticipate
change, shape it to fit our purposes, and act as
its agent.
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Continuous Improvement

• Charting our own course!

We embrace a total quality management philosophy
and continuous improvement initiatives. We will
guide each other through uncharted waters and
become the leader in changing the collection
industry. We are not afraid to stand alone if it
is the right thing to do.
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Choose People who Fit Your Organization Values

• Right Bus
• Right Seat
• Right Fit

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Stay focused on the goal

• Recruiting, training and motivating people is
  comprehensive, incremental and coordinated
• Identify peoples strengths and develop support
  departments
• Encourage teambuilding, collaboration and
  cooperation in all parts and all levels of your
  organization
• Constantly focus on communication and employee
  engagement
• Identify and resolve conflicts along the way
• Seek continuous, incremental improvements

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Hire for Talent, Train for Skill

• Past experience isnt everything
• Tough to change heart and attitude
• Do all you can to ensure the right fit
• Prescreen
• First Interview
• Second Interview
• Reference Check
• Background Check

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Selecting Talent

• Talent outperforms your expectations
• Talent outperforms experience
• Need for each manager to understand his or her
  own talents and non-talents as a filter (prism)
  on the world
• Talent is just like a fingerprint Unique!

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Use a Strengths-based approach

• Identify, appreciate and capitalize on each
  employees unique strengths
• Set the goal and recognize people will get there
  differently
• Individuals dont need to be well-rounded but
  teams do

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Now, Discover Your Strengths
Tom Rath, Strengths Finder 2.0

• Each employee knows his or her unique strengths
  and strength zone
• Every person in the company knows everyone elses
  strengths too!
• My strengths are
• Relator
• Adaptability
• Strategic
• Futuristic
• Arranger

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Now, Discover Your Strengths
Tom Rath, Strengths Finder 2.0

• Most common strengths for all CBE Employees
• Achiever
• Responsibility
• Strategic
• Adaptability
• Relator
• Most common strengths for Collectors
• Achiever
• Strategic
• Responsibility
• Adaptability
• Empathy

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Provide solid footing for Effective Training

• Time spent training up front reduces time to
  rebuild later
• Hire the best trainers you can and reward them
• Provide ongoing support for your new hires as
  well as veteran collectors
• Invest time, energy and money necessary to
  document and maintain your SOP system
• Refuse the temptation to rush to the phone!

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Lay the groundwork

• Provide clear authority and responsibility for
  training, teambuilding leadership development
• Create organizational development department that
  fosters
• Training at all levels of organization
• Enhancement of corporate culture and core values
• Resource and target your training efforts
• Expanded staff dedicated to training from 1 to
  8.5 employees
• Tear down training silos and build cross
  functional teams that share the passion for
  training and development

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Tear Down Silos Create Cross Functional Teams
Collector Development
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Hit the mark for each employee
Engaged or Sweet Spot 21
Show me the Money!
Not Engaged or Neutral 63
The Improvement Zone!
Actively Disengaged or Bitter 16
Retired On Active Duty
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Engagement

• Seek out and engage employees who freely and
  willingly offer discretionary effort
• Collectors who Go the extra mile to help
  debtors find lasting payment solutions drive
  performance
• Stronger revenue growth
• Lower costs
• Reduced turnover and absenteeism
• Increased creativity and innovation
• Positive culture
• Extraordinary performance results for clients

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Key Elements of Engagement

• Understand employees different learning styles
  and how to engage their differences
• Emotional
• I care about the future of my organization
• Im proud to work for this organization
• My organization inspires me
• Rational
• I understand how my department contributes to
  organizational success
• I see how my role impacts the organization
• I am willing to put in extra effort for
  organizational success

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Training Modules

• New Hire Classroom Instruction (Three weeks)
• Orientation and company history, FDCPA, State
  laws, Privacy Act and all other regulatory
  requirements, client specific requirements,
  collection system instruction, listening and
  collector talk off strategies and techniques
• Teambuilding exercises
• Rigorous testing
• New Collector Training Bay (Eight weeks)
• Matched with experienced collectors managers to
  build confidence and experience

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Training Modules

• One-on-one Instruction (New and experienced
  employees)
• Role play, live borrower calls, review recordings
  of contacts as well as providing direction for
  improvement. Allows collectors to hear
  themselves as well as learn from others
• Monthly Training (By business unit)
• Changes in regulatory requirements, laws and new
  customer requirements
• FDCPA, Privacy and Security Safeguards
• Required twice a year for every employee

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Training Modules

• REACH Real Experimental Adventures for Change
  and Hope (Supervisory Management Team)
• Week-long off-site, provides cooperative
  problem-solving, strategic thinking, conflict
  resolution, relationship-building, personal
  risk-taking, trust enhancement, understanding
  appreciation of individual strengths.
• Improves communication, reduces conflict helps
  team focus on collecting and resolving accounts
• CBE University (Offered to all employees)
• Enhances general and leadership skills.
• Testing Certification Roster
• All employees sign training and testing
  certification

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Build strong leaders to offer support

• Why develop the leadership team?
• Great leaders discover whats unique about each
  employee and they capitalize on it
• Successful managers figure out how to incorporate
  peoples differences into the overall plan
• Leaders build trusting relationships between
  other management team members that foster success
• People join companies, but they quit
• managers

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Manager Selection

• Choose manager candidates who want to develop
  people
• Seek those with Servant Leadership experiences
• Best collectors dont always make great managers
• Frequent past behavior indicates future behavior

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Maintain, Repair, Enhance Continuously

• Communicate your expectations and requirements
• Inspect what you expect
• Review, Remind, Reinforce
• Look for ways to make your concepts sticky
• Coaching
• Stories
• Activities

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Success is in the Details

• Daily training opportunities
• One-on-one coaching (supervisor/trainer)
• QA monitoring
• Compliance Chat
• Comprehensive SOPs accessible to all personnel

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Daily Training Opportunities

• Create a learning and teaching environment
  where training opportunities successes abound
  every day
• Hot Topic Compliance training focused on
  collectors doing the right thing on every
  collection call.
• Core Competencies Training focused on the
  skills necessary to be successful in a collection
  position.
• Reinforce Client Specific requirements
• Reward positives as well as focus on improvement
  areas

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Quality Assurance Monitoring

• 100 call recording supports QA monitoring
• Cross functional teams jointly evaluate score
  calls
• Operations
• Compliance
• Organizational Development
• Seven calls from every collector at CBE each
  month
• Scoring
• Best Practices
• Areas of Opportunity
• Compliance trends inform and enhance future
  training
• Close cooperation between Ops/Compliance/OD

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Compliance Chat

• Online QA chat resource
• Employees prefer communicating via Chat
• Compliance team available via online chat
  function to respond to questions
• Opportunity to continuously teach the why and
  how behind procedures and requirements
• Reinforces use of SOPs to ensure accuracy and
  compliance

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Proofs in the Pudding
Top 10 Competitive Rankings Top 10 Competitive Rankings Top 10 Competitive Rankings
IRS 1 out of 2 PCAs in 8 out of 9 ranking periods Quality Scores Recovery
Treasury FMS 4 out of 5 PCAs (Best new PCA since 2006) Cumulative Recovery
Department of ED 5 out of 12 PCAs (Best new PCA since 2004) Cumulative Recovery Administrative Resolutions
Major Bankcard 1,2 or 3 in five different markets out of 8 PCAs 1-3 month cumulative performance
Regional Utility 2 out of 3 PCAs in 2 markets Most recent 6-month
Municipal Utility 1 out of four PCAs Most recent 6-month
Regional Utility 1 out of three PCAs Monthly netback formula
Satellite TV 2 out of 4 PCAs 9 month effective rate
Nationwide Telecom 1 out of 3 PCAs Cumulative liquidation
NationwideTelecom 1 out of 3 PCAs Cumulative liquidation
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IRS Private Debt Collection Program

• 82.5 million collected in 30 months
• 27 or 53,991 of accounts resolved (out of
  nearly 200,000 accounts placed)
• Independent taxpayer satisfaction survey scores
  
• 99 (Regulatory, procedural and customer
  accuracy)
• 99.4 (Timeliness of collection actions)
• 99.9 (Professionalism)
• Less than one-half percent asked to be returned
  to IRS
• Virtually no cases identified as validated
  complaints (six accounts)
• Comparable IRS scores ranked in 60 range

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Presentation Summary

• Success Factors for training, motivating and
  developing employees
• Know what you want to build
• Choose people who fit
• Provide solid footing with effective training
• Build strong leaders to offer support
• Maintain, repair, enhance continuously

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The CBE Group, Inc.

• The CBE Group is a privately held, 76-year old
  debt collection firm driven to do the right thing
  for our customers, consumers, employees and
  community. CBE is headquartered in Waterloo, IA
  with additional operational centers in Atlanta,
  Kansas City, and West Des Moines, IA. More than
  1000 employees serve the debt recovery needs of
  more than 900 clients in the Government,
  Financial, Healthcare, Education,
  Telecommunications and Utility industries.
• Visit us at www.cbegroup.com

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A Foundation of TrainingThank You!

• Randy Kamm, Vice President Government Service
• The CBE Group, Inc.
• rakamm_at_cbegroup.com
• 319.226.5176