It’s no secret that hiring and retention are big issues for consumer finance services. Finding agents and representatives for collections, auto finance, borrowing and lending, and healthcare is tough.
McKinsey & Company’s most recent survey indicates that a flexible working arrangement (e.g. working from home or a hybrid) was in the top three most important motivators for finding a new job.
A new Robert Half survey reports:
“Nearly one-third of workers (32%) who go into the office at least one day a week are willing to take a pay cut for the ability to do their job remotely all the time. When asked by how much, the average response was 18%.”
Could remote work be the answer for attracting - and keeping - top agents?
Before COVID, for most consumer finance accounts receivable teams, remote work wasn’t even on the radar.
But it turned out it was possible. “We basically sent everyone home with their towers and monitors when the Michigan shelter-in-place came down,” explained Mike Hillier, VP at American Profit Recovery, in a webinar we held during the (relatively) early days of the pandemic.
Greg Schubert, CEO of Sequium Asset Solutions, also said most of their team worked remotely, though training was done on-site. Both leaders said the transition wasn’t easy, but it did work.
That didn’t surprise us at Prodigal. In 2020, when our clients shut down or went to work offsite, there was an initial dip in results and productivity.
But after April 2020, Shantanu Gangal, Prodigal’s CEO said, “Productivity-level-wise, we’ve seen some of the best performers come back in full force. The agents are just as productive, the total collections are, if not back to the highest, near the highest.”
What was the secret?
Gangal explained that during that early shutdown:
“Agencies without speech analytics correlated to a decrease in agent productivity, while almost 40% of agencies using speech analytics reported an increase in productivity.”
And speech analytics tools are important not just for productivity, but for compliance. “You have to have a speech analytics process in place in order to ensure your compliance necessities are being taken care of,” Schubert added.
So working from home is possible for consumer finance agents, as long as they’re supported correctly.
"It was hard for managers used to walking the call floor and keeping an ear out for everything from raised voices to snippets of mini-Miranda to let go. But being forced into a situation where we had to work from home allowed us to figure out solutions for what worked," he added.
Accounts receivables and collections professionals know time is hugely important in their work. Both Hillier and Schubert mentioned in-call and wrap-up time, as well as conversion rates as vital statistics that technology can help them measure and act on.
But less easily quantifiable KPIs matter too, and the right tech can make a huge difference in meeting those goals.
“Saying the right things, doing the right things, following the proper procedures, that’s a separate issue you can’t attack throughout the day all the time, but it’s definitely something that needs to be focused on,” Hillier said.
All of those KPIs were important before COVID. But with reps working remotely, technology had the opportunity to shine, offering management the right insights into their teams’ work even from a distance.
Your business runs on people. And in this labor market, struggling to find the right team is no joke.
But with state governments enshrining work-from-home options for financial services companies, banks, collectors, and other consumer finance teams, the path is clear.
The key, as is clear from the webinar conversation we had way back in August of 2020, is having the right technology in place so teams are supported and managers have actionable insight.
Not convinced? Join our webinar on hiring and retaining top collections agents and hear the secrets of the best in the biz.
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