Closing the Books: Scorecards for Success in Debt Collection

Mike Selbitschka joined IC System fresh out of high school. Now IC System’s Vice President of Operations, Selbitschka knows a thing or two about the collections industry. And the best tool he knows for measuring success is the scorecard.

There are multiple scorecards used to track performance. Some, Selbitschka said, come from IC System’s clients, and some they internally generate using various KPI metrics for scorecards used with IC System agents.

“Those (metrics) could be around call quality,” Selbitschka said. “They could be around their talk time, their update time, their connects per hour; we really get down to the details for the agents, so we can be very clear on how they are performing and where their opportunities are.”

In the industry, Selbitschka said many clients would split business up between a couple of different competitors. Still, as one competitor performs well on the scorecard, the client will increase the business they receive.

“And, obviously, as you continue to gain market share, you’re gaining business which is gaining FTEs,” Selbitschka said. “So, the more business we have, the more collectors we need. The more collectors we need, the more leads we need. The more leads we need, the more supervisors we need.”

Success builds more success and opportunities.

The collections industry is highly competitive. Selbitschka believes competition is an essential ingredient to IC System’s success. It is a driver when pitching new business to prospects who don’t have multiple collections partners.

“How do you know if your agency is doing everything they possibly can if there’s no competitor?,” Selbitschka said. “You don’t. They could be maybe working accounts for maybe three months and then not working them. And we could come in with a completely different strategy and blow them out of the water.”