I don’t know about you, but I tend to find that when people owe someone money, half the time they will kinda avoid contact.
I’ve often found when ringing my friends repeatedly throughout the day and evening (and sometimes at 5am because I know they are early risers) that they will not bother picking up the phone.
Even when I withhold my caller ID.
Letters I have written to them and posted through their letterbox have been ignored and not even replied to. And this includes the ones I actually used ink to write.
Sometimes I feel it’s not worth lending 50p for a cup of coffee anymore, if this is how they treat my generosity.
Surprisingly, people view mortgage companies in the same way.
Quite often, we will find our telephone calls and letters are ignored and disregarded.
We will have months and years of no contact – hurtful.
A helpful tool, despite its Big Brothery overtones, is to use companies that provide field agents.
We’ll ask them to go and say hello and a) see if our customer will talk to them b) check that they still actually live there and c) find out anything that we need to know that might be stopping the customer speaking to us.
The agents used are generally older, former professionals with experience in going through people’s finances and working out why people are prioritising their Dog Kennel Store Card over their mortgage.
Or if they are insisting on a £700 a month gambling habit.
They actually help. They will work out a realistic payment plan with our customer and provide us with a report and their recommendation.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
We don’t have to agree with their recommendation, but we will certainly take into account anything that they tell us, particularly about our customers’ circumstances, such as any illnesses or changes in employment or income.
It is certainly better than a customer sitting there hoping it will go away and not being proactive.
