Naked Is The Best Disguise For The Collection Industry

The collection industry has always had a bad reputation and in the beginning it was well deserved in my opinion. In one of my interviews I spoke with Harvey Vengroff about the early days here is an excerpt from that interview in 2013.

Next he told a story about work releases from the local jail and hiring thugs to collect the receivables, working off 3X5 cards and of hiring ranked boxers and former “FBI Most Wanted “as staff.  Harvey smiles as he remembers this period.  “As things change you adapt, it is not nearly as much fun now as it was then.   I was 21-22 years old and I had a bunch of tough guys working for me.  It was fun to hit people and get paid for it, now you have to do things according to a set of rules.”  He sighed after that statement as if the memory was fond to him.

Read the whole interview here  

Harvey was just being honest and now his company is well known for compliance. But now that the 1950’s is long behind the industry and its been over 40 years since the FDCPA was written whats the reputation of the industry look like today? Horrible! What are you doing to change that?

I think part of the problem is exactly that, we are not doing enough to create good press and deal with the bad press. I understand why, the press is consumer facing and they will always take the side of the masses. I have a close friend in the industry who did an interview for the press and tried to relay a clear message to the interviewer but when the article was published it was full of just the points that a consumer would want to hear or expect to hear, the message was gone. This is another reason we need to create positive press.

The answer is not to hide but come out and been seen. If we show ourselves as an industry like a naked person does in a nudest camp maybe we can also see our faults and opportunities to be more consumer centric. So how do we create positive press? It’s right in front of you, its all the consumers you deal with daily that are happy with your service but do not post a positive review because you did not ask them to.

Yes I am proposing that you ask debtors to post a review of your service. CRAZY HUH!

And you should also answer all the negative posts and try to mitigate the bad review or get it deleted. Yes I am saying contact the debtor and try to resolve the complaint. Even if that complaint was sent to www.pissedconsumer.com or www.ripoffreport.com or a site that does not require an answer, unlike the BBB or the CFPB. You need to address all complaints in real time on every complaint website on the web. Now your asking how the heck your going to do that, read on my friend.

Online reputation management is not new but it is new to debt collections, here is how it works. Lighthouse Consulting aggregates your good and bad consumer reviews from over 100 websites like Facebook, BBB, Twitter, Pissed Consumer and Google so your company can easily monitor what your customers are saying about you — in real-time!

You can hear every word stated about your business on Social media. Lighthouse Reputation Beacon is a service that automatically sends a review request to your company or the CEO’s cell phone, scoring new reviews for your business directly on Google and Facebook. Imagine a collection agency asking for consumer reviews, thats new! It will make your agency stand out.

Google your company right now, I’ll wait…… and if its indexed by google you’ll see google reviews which you can click on and see whats posted about your company. Most of you have never done this.

Lighthouse Reputation Beacon aggregates your reviews from top review sites. See what consumers are saying about your agency or law firm, in real-time.

With Lighthouse Reputation Beacon, your business can manage negative reviews with easy-to-use tools to address customer feedback quickly.  Your companies great reviews are collected from major sites are indexed by search engines for higher search ranking.

Price is so cheap you’ll say yes with little thought, call me 904-687-1687.

Watch a video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soA49gtakZQ  or Contact Phillip W. Duff at [email protected] for more info