Ask a Manager: I'm Starting To Hate My Customers

[minoanmiss]

I work in telephone based collections for a credit card and loan provider, I work in telephone based collections for a credit card and loan provider, but increasingly I’m getting frustrated by the attitude of the customers we deal with. I find myself uncharitably thinking that they’re lucky that we are willing to work with them to craft repayment plans as opposed to sending them straight to debt collectors.

Intellectually, I know there are a vast array of complex reasons why people fall into debt but it’s difficult to bear in mind when speaking to customers who have taken out dozens of pieces of technology on credit and they’re not able to repay these. They get frustrated and annoyed with us, and feel that we are treating them unfairly. Yet it is money they have borrowed from us and they are not able to repay it, I would hope my attitude doesn’t come through on the phone calls but I fear that my lack of patience is starting to show.

Try to keep in mind that you can’t know a stranger’s circumstances. You’re just seeing one very small piece of the picture with limited info. You don’t know if the person you’re talking to had an unexpected medical crisis, or a divorce, or lost their job, or all sorts of other things that can change a person’s financial situation without warning. But even if they did make bad financial decisions, a lot of people don’t get good (or any) financial education in this country, and credit cards companies employ armies of people to convince consumers they can afford to put purchases on credit.

Are there some people who are just flagrantly irresponsible deadbeats? Sure. But you have no way of knowing if you’re talking to one of them, or if you’re talking to someone who had a personal crisis blow their life up. You’ll do a better job — and be a generally kinder person — if you default to assuming it’s the latter, not the former. (If that doesn’t work, another trick: How would you want a bill collector to talk to someone you loved? Talk to them the way you’d hope someone else would talk to your grandma.)

Comments

[ioplokon]

1. the reason companies offer a payment plan isn't to be nice, it's because it's cheaper & less risky than going through a debt collector. especially w/ unsecured debt.

2. the risk of non-payment is why you charge interest - bc you expect some people will not pay. if your company is doing their underwriting correctly, it can absorb some people not paying.

3. working in collections is just a bad time, honestly. I know some guys who did and they would literally slap each other on their breaks in order to release stress/feel something. there's a reason there's pretty high churn. it might be worth looking at another job, bc even w/in the realm of call center jobs, collections is awful.

[azurelunatic]

Collections is awful, especially because the easy situations will have already probably been taken care of by an in-house "hey, you seem to be Behind, can we set up something" and the incentives at the collections house to get their workers to wring blood out of stones are often pretty perverse. Source: I worked in-house collections as a temp, one of my old roommates worked Actual Collections Agency.

I managed to forget the part where LW was in-house in the thirty seconds between reading and commenting, go me!

[ioplokon]

I probably muddied the waters bc my friends were in Actual Collections. I still think in-house seems rough as well, bc it's just not a fun situation to be involved in, but yeah probably not as absolutely miserable as agency work.

[lilysea]

Dear LW, not all electronics purchases are luxuries.

Someone may have put a phone or laptop on their credit card because they needed a phone or laptop to get or keep a job.

[castiron]

Or because they don't have a car in a city with bad public transit, and it's really difficult to do Lyft without a phone and data plan.

[lilysea]

Yes, it is literally impossible to get a wheelchair taxi to collect you without a mobile phone that can receive text messages

and also the driver will call you when they are 15 min away to confirm you still want a taxi

and then call you AGAIN when they are 5 min away to confirm you still want a taxi

(they have an economic incentive to try to cancel your booking in bad faith, because if they pick up a group of 8 or 9 people instead of a wheelchair user, they can charge more $$)

[adrian_turtle]

You also need a mobile phone to have a child in daycare.
And to access government services.

[p_cocincinus]

Collections is soul-sucking work, and when you start hating your customers, it's time to move on.

[purlewe]

this.