Pre-collection Customer care contact center
A pre-collection customer care contact center is a dedicated outgoing call center that handles collection events of type A – a problem with the customer’s means of payment, or type C – failure to pay an invoice on time. Its purpose is to prevent the customer from reaching the collection service:
In type A events: by calling the customer directly from the moment the supplier becomes aware of a problem with his payment method and before the customer accumulates debt.
In type C events: when the amount of the invoice is substantial (in relation to other invoices), it is better to contact the customer directly as early as possible and not let the customer accumulate more debt.
A pre-collection center does not have to exist only in the form of a separate center and can function as a dedicated team within the financial center, within Customer care or the collection center, but its purpose should be sacred: pre-collection care is the most suitable solution for customer retention by preventing the customer from entering the collection process at all, which may damage the relationship with the customer.
Also, when the cancellation of a payment method occurs for technical reasons, such as a change of bank or credit card theft – contacting the customer by phone saves him a headache and time and is a valuable service to the customer.
Pre-legal contact center
A pre-legal contact center is a collection center whose main purpose is to prevent clients from being transferred to legal proceedings. As in the previous case, a team can be set up in a regular financial/collection center for this purpose or this department can be looked at as a separate unit.
The pre-legal contact center was created to retain customers or even bring them back to the organization, so it must be provided with retention tools. These tools are sales tools such as promotions, discounts, and even extended settlement powers in exchange for the customer signing a new extended commitment period.
However, the pre-legal contact center is essentially not like a typical contact center, in that it works with clients just before transferring them to legal proceedings and is the one who sends final warning letters before transferring them to legal proceedings. His mandate is to try in every possible way to close the debt with the client without transferring it to legal treatment for several reasons: in addition to seriously damaging future relations with the client due to transferring it to legal treatment, collection through lawyers is always expensive and may take a long time. Therefore, it is always preferable to reach a compromise with the client and not transfer him to legal proceedings.