The Great Lakes got even greater last week at the Great Lakes Credit and Collections Association (GLCCA) 2023 conference in Milwaukee.

When we weren’t eating at Zaffiro’s (Milwaukee pizza > Chicago pizza. Fight us.), we were talking to everyone we could about what’s on their minds.

Here were the three topics with the biggest buzz at this year’s conference:

1. FTC Safeguards Rule

This is…not surprising. We also had a team at CRS 2023 in Vegas and it was in the top three there too.

No more last-minute delays - this thing is coming at us fast. And here’s the nutty part: when asking the people at the event if they felt comfortable in their understanding of the safeguards, one person raised their hand.

Yeah, you read that right. One person. Yikes. 

Fortunately, GLCCA has everyone’s backs, and there was a fantastic panel (“Necessary Guardrails: Data Privacy Compliance in the ARM Industry”) with a lot of solid, actionable best practices including:

• Monitor your vendors
• Train your employees (and keep training them)
• Make sure the whole organization is compliant (side note: apparently a number of risk issues have come from people higher up, not front-line employees)
• Ensure remote work practices are secure

Because this is exposing risk, the CFPB is going to have high interest, so it’s not something to mess around with.

Take a look at the buzz post on CRS 2023 for some resources attendees there shared with us.

And yes, Prodigal is compliant with the FTC Safeguards Rule. That extends to your data and protects your customers, too. Give us a shout - we’re ready to help.

2. Operations issues and improvements

This was a huge topic, probably spurred on by the excellent “Don’t Hurt Your Business by Accepting Operational Mediocrity” session by the folks at PayCourt and State Collection Service.

Some of the topics from that session we heard echoed elsewhere:

• First-call resolution is increasingly important. Agents are getting voicemail 70-80% of the time. That means when agents get a Right Party Contact they have to know what to say, when to say it, and how to close.

Some of the people we talked to about our real-time agent assistance solution mentioned that this matters even more right now.

• Complaints management - how do you keep track of compliments and complaints? How can you coach agents to manage issues before they escalate (or get reported to the CFPB).

We’ve been hearing this all over, so we’ve got a webinar coming up to address these issues. Grab your spot to learn all about identifying and managing consumer complaints.

3. Hiring, training, and retention

Agencies from large to small are struggling to find, train, and keep good agents. A few specific questions we heard:

1. Do we hire for collections experience, or new energy?
2. How do you motivate agents?
3. Is there any way to make ramp time shorter?

Speaking of webinars, we actually just hosted one about staffing issues that addressed a lot of these issues (tip: the answer to “B” is Girl Scout cookies - seriously). Check out the recap for tips on these sticky situations.

Heading home‍

Took some pizza to go and headed home. If we missed you, you can always catch us right here!

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