By Lorna Dickson, Operations Manager for the Lewis group
The public sector has long been adept at outsourcing. It recognises that working with trusted partners can deliver impressive results where everybody wins - especially the public they serve. One of the less well-publicised but most effective of these outsourced services is debt collection.

Local Authorities were among the first to trial the use of outsourced collectors, initially to work on ‘sundry debt’ portfolios such as rents on council-owned garages or outstanding library fees, which although individually are comparatively small scale, when seen as a whole can amount to many hundreds of thousands of pounds. Today, collections are outsourced not just by Local Authorities, but also some of the largest parts of national government, notably Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise as well as organisations such as the DVLA and Companies House.

Although very different in scale, each shares a common rationale and objective: the need to recover money vital to the public purse. They also share a common belief in the value of working with professional businesses that have specific expertise, and specific skill-sets, that are geared to what is a challenging and often sensitive issue.

One of the principal benefits of working with an external collections partner is that it frees internal credit management teams to work in areas where there own skills can be seen to add more value. It also enables them to benefit from the very latest collections methods, techniques and innovations without themselves having to find additional resource or the budget to invest in the latest technology.

But there is also a very practical reason for outsourcing collections: customers are inclined to see an approach from an external third-party as somehow more ‘serious’ than requests for payment from the original creditor. In the customer’s mind, the gravity has been escalated to a higher level, and an external collector has the ability to escalate the process still further, perhaps even to the point of litigation and enforcement.

Trust is of course the essential ingredient for any outsourced relationship to work, and this is especially true of debt collection. The debt collection agency is working on your behalf, in direct contact with your customers, and so ensuring those customers are treated fairly – with respect and courtesy – is paramount. It is, after all, your reputation that you are placing in their hands.

Demonstrating compliance with industry standards and codes is one thing; working with an agency that genuinely wants to help your customers out of debt is quite another.

But a successful partnership needs to demonstrate more than trust: it must also be proven to work, to deliver tangible value for (public) money. This means working with an agency that can ‘flex’ with your requirements, that truly understands your needs and the challenges faced by your customers so that they can find workable solutions. Sometimes that means being different; doing things differently in order to satisfy all parties.

Those who have worked with external agencies before, value those agencies that share in the risk and reward. For those that have yet to fully engage, a new opportunity awaits.

For more information
www.lewisgroup.co.uk