Voice Broadcasting System Helps Reach Thousands of Right Party Contacts

Two Collection Partner firms share their experiences with
Global Connect's Voice Broadcasting System

Hubbard Systems continues to develop relationships with firms that complement and enhance our users' collection systems and processes. Many of our users are benefiting from having interfaced complementary applications and services such as letter outsourcing, skip tracing, credit bureau reporting and predictive dialers. One of our most recent interfaces works with the voice broadcasting system by Global Connect.

Today's collection firms are focused on increasing their bottom line through greater portfolio penetration and increasing right party contacts. By adding a predictive dialing system or a voice broadcasting solution, call centers are maximizing their efficiencies.

Predictive dialing systems allow firms to define campaigns and increase outbound call volumes. The system dials from a list of pre-defined contact numbers. Once the call is answered by a human voice, the call is turned over to the next available collector. A voice broadcasting system can complement a predictive dialer system or stand on its own by delivering personalized voice messages to hundreds or thousands in only a few minutes. In addition, right party contacts can link directly back to an agent.

We selected Global Connect because of the system's ease of use, their customer support, and it does not require any upfront capital expenditures. The Global Connect Voice Broadcasting solution can be affordable for any size firm. With their usage-based fees, firms pay according to their specific needs and there is virtually no capital outlay for hardware or software.

Voice broadcasting, using Global Connect, has provided proven results from our end users. To find out how the system was actually working in the field, we spoke with two Collection Partner users who have implemented the integrated Collection Partner/Global Connect solution, Grant Sutton, Collection Manager, at R. Brandley Neff, P.C. and Wendy Patterson, Collection Manager, and Jill Thomas, Director of Operations, of Zarzaur & Schwartz, P.C.

For these two firms the primary considerations in adding a voice broadcasting system were to increase their collector call volumes and establish a more effective way of working their files. Although Zarzaur & Schwartz had been using an auto dialer previously, adding voice broadcasting gave them some additional capabilities in managing their workflow. At Bradley Neff, they were “blown away with the volume of phone calls that could be made and the messages left for what we are paying”, said Grant Sutton.

As for choosing Global Connect, the product features and the company's receptivity to meeting their special requests, made the procurement decision quick and easy at Zarzaur & Schwartz. “We needed to look no further even though Global Connect was our first consideration”, says Wendy Patterson. Bradley Neff chose Global Connect for its ease of use, the availability of an interface with Collection Partner, and no upfront capital expenditures. “There were other systems that could somewhat interface to Collection Partner, but they would have required ongoing manual interfacing and it wasn't something we wanted to get into”, stated Grant Sutton.

Having a cost effective system was important to both firms. Bradley Neff preferred an Internet based system as this eliminated the need to buy hardware and software. At Zarzaur & Schwartz, they are no longer using their auto dialer, as it would not interface with their new phone system. And their fees for Global Connect's voice broadcasting system are less than their previous auto dialer's software support fees.

As for call volume increases, Bradley Neff estimates an increase of right party contacts 5-6 times over making calls manually. They reach more people in a shorter period of time and the system continues to work for them during off hours. Sutton also likes the system's ability to pre-sort the call upload file. From the intial upload file, the system creates two files, one where numbers appear to be correct and another that screens out numbers that appear to be incorrect (e.g. missing area codes, invalid area codes). The file containing potentially invalid numbers is quickly transferred to skip tracing. The system can also eliminate duplicate numbers.

The most compelling benefit for Zarzaur & Schwartz is the management of their workflow. “You can put everything into one file and send it out there, and the calls that are really important are going to automatically connect back to you; and those calls where nobody is home will be taken care of for us,” says Wendy Patterson. “Additionally, every single file can be run in the exact same export, whether it is pre or post legal, and can be taken care of within a couple of hours. Knowing that the intial call has been made, the collectors can spend time on other things since the system will update the file for them”.

Global Connect has been well received by the collectors at both firms. The collectors can set up individual campaigns; they can slow down a campaign or speed it up based on the return calls they receive. This flexibility was important in having it well accepted by their collectors. Additionally it is extremely user friendly, reports Sutton at Bradley Neff. Similarly, Wendy Patterson at Zarzaur & Swartz says she doesn't have to worry about the collectors “spinning their wheels” calling those where nobody is at home.

Although they were not using an auto dialer before installing Global Connect, Bradley Neff opted for this system over a predictive dialer because of its flexibility in setting up multiple ways to handle their campaigns. As an example, the firm may opt to run the campaigns at different times in the day. A campaign can run first thing in the morning and based on results, calls can be removed from campaigns set to run later that day. If a live person answers, they are given the option to transfer to a collector at the firm or have the collector return the call at another time. The firm also receives an on-line real-time report of the calls that connected but no action taken. A collector can then immediately attempt to contact those debtors manually as the firm knows someone is at home.

Implementing Global Connect was a snap for both firms. “We were up and running in 3-4 hours tops”, says Sutton. “And that included creating our messages and playing around with it to see the different tools and a brief intial training session.” Jill Thomas at Zarzaur & Schwartz had a similar experience. They spent just a few hours crafting their messages and massaging their dialer file and were running the next day. They also like that they can make changes in a matter of minutes and can save the recorded message files for use in a similar campaign down the road.

As for advice for other firms, Wendy Patterson at Zarzaur advises that the firm really take a look at the volume of files they are trying to work daily, versus how many incoming and outgoing phone lines they have. They were pleasantly surprised, shocked actually, at how many debtors chose to connect back to the firm to speak to a live collector. They warn firms to have enough people to handle the number of lines that might be coming back in at one time. They had not anticipated this and had collectors scrambling to answer all of the calls.

Both R. Bradley Neff, Attorney at Law and Zarzaur & Schwartz, P.C. are excellent examples of the benefits of Hubbard Systems' continuing commitment to working with other vendors who provide solutions that when coupled with Collection Partner increase the value of both. The addition of the Global Connect's voice broadcasting system complements the increasing needs of the collection process.

We would like to thank Jill Thomas and Wendy Patterson with Zarzaur & Schwartz, PC and Grant Sutton with R. Bradley Neff, Attorney at Law, for their participation in this article.