Your Competitive Advantage Might be as Close
as Your Phone!

Two Collection Partner users share their experiences with TouchStar Software's Predictive Dialer

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 predictive dialing system by TouchStar Software. We selected Touchstar because of the system's ease of use, their customer support, and an extensive feature set. Predictive dialing, using TouchStar, 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/Touchstar solution, Jim McNeile a partner in the firm of Cohen, McNeile, Pappas and Shuttleworth, P.C. and Fred Blitt of Blitt & Gaines, P.C.

For these two firms the primary considerations in adding a predictive dialer were to increase their collector call volumes and establish a more effective way of getting through their files. With their clients requiring reporting and standard operating procedure, these firms knew that the auditing capability of a predicative dialer would improve their results and increase client satisfaction. Cohen, McNeile, et.al. installed TouchStar in September 2004. Jim McNeile, says Touchstar “has been the best product and had the greatest impact on the way we work the files since we installed Collection Partner in 1987. “

As for choosing Touchstar, having an interface already in place for Collection Partner was important to McNeile. "We didn't have to do any special programming and it had everything I wanted the dialer to do. In fact we were running campaigns in just 2 days." Fred Blitt agrees, however as one of the first Collection Partner clients, his installation was closer to a week. Ease of use was the most critical factor for his firm, including not only the user-friendly interface for the collectors, but also the management of uploading and downloading of the files.

Touchstar has been well received by the collectors at both firms. McNeile's Collection Manager, Kathy Cook, feels that it has improved not only the call volume but also the way the collectors work the files. "The dialer doesn't let them get off track. It helps them stay on task and doesn't give them the option of skipping things." Blitt's collectors like the ability to access their Collection Partner files and retrieve messages and contacts while utilizing the dialer. "It helps our collectors increase their collections and they're excited about that," says Operations Manager Paul Wilken. "They can review the files more uniformly versus having to think about the process and one of the most important things is to have a standard operating procedure."

The user interface and standard operating procedures reduced the learning curve for new employees at Blitt. “It allows one to two people who really understand the inner workings of Collection Partner to drive how the files are worked so new hires get up to speed faster”, says Blitt.

Touchstar has met the expectations of both firms, although with its installation just a few months ago, McNeile says they are still learning a lot about the system. They continue to apply new techniques and change some of their procedures. The most compelling benefit for McNeile has been the increased frequency that files are now reviewed and worked.

Both firms have dramatically increased their call volumes. Blitt reports about ten times the number of calls, but notes that it's the ability to make more strategic calls that really highlights the system's value. McNeile estimates they have increased their volumes by between eight and ten times the number of files. Since their installation is still new, they haven't been able to track the increase in collection revenue, but are confident that the increased output has resulted in increased collections.

Moving through the files more quickly and weeding out those with bad numbers also boosts productivity. Those files are then quickly transferred to skip tracing. Additionally, Blitt is confident that they can now touch their vast volume of files more rapidly and "stamp the account" in accordance with the clients' guidelines. Not only do they move through files more quickly, but also more uniformly. "We can now put an unmanned campaign out there that leaves messages for debtors and we know the call has been made. The files can be worked more strategically by having a unique message for different groups. We can apply the specific type of campaign to a specific type of account," says Blitt.

A benefit that is more difficult to measure but ultimately most critical is meeting their clients' auditing requirements. Collection clients are mandating call volumes and operating procedures and want to see front-end collections and liquidation rates improve. According to McNeile, "we were struggling to keep up with our clients' demands so the implementation of this system was a no brainer for us." Although the dialer was considered a big ticket item, Blitt's clients wanted to know that he was applying the most current technology available to increase collections and reduce collections cycle times. Hence the predictive dialer has provided them with something of a competitive advantage. They no longer have to be concerned about the risk associated with maintaining confidentiality agreements because they no longer need to outsource files for phone calls. They can now keep everything in-house and be assured of hitting their productivity numbers.

As for advice for other firms, Blitt recommends that users have a Collection Partner expert at your firm who can handle the translation issues with the dialer. "It's not a problem," he says, "just one of those things you want to have available when it's going in. The TouchStar techs will not know your specific Collection Partner setup and how you are coding and treating files. You want to make sure you have the correct transfer of data coming back into the Collection Partner system."

Both of these firms 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 TouchStar dialer for Cohen McNeile Pappas & Shuttleworth, P.C. and Blitt & Gaines, P.C. was relatively simple and quickly delivered noticeable increases in collector call volume.

We would like to thank Jim McNeile, Kathy Cook and Pam Jensen of Cohen, McNeile, Pappas & Shuttleworth, P.C. and Fred Blitt and Paul Wilken of Blitt & Gaines, P.C. for their participation in this article.