More Critical Questions to Ask Your Agency
Question 4 — Question 5 — Question 6
 | 4) Is your agency complicating your life with poor communication, complicated or nonexistent IT interface and non-customized reports? Communication is the key to all successful partnerships in personal or business relationships. At PRC, we truly believe that we have a partnership with our clients. Communicating effectively starts at the sales process and continues after you have decided to partner with PRC. |
At PRC, we have an experienced and dedicated team of Information Technology experts. Our experienced team has dealt with all forms of placement files, system access issues, and interfacing with many different systems that our clients use. In addition, PRC has FACS Web, which is our secure, online, real-time access to your accounts. This product helps you to communicate your needs and desires to us by allowing you to view your information, statistics, make notes on accounts, report payments, place accounts, perform audits and much more, all REAL-TIME. You can do all this from the comfort of your office. Because we have a dedicated team of IT professionals and tools such as Crystal Reporting and Business Objects, we can customize reports that you need if our basic reports do not contain the information you must have. We want to support you in your job and we want to make you look good to your boss. We obtain the information that you want to see and with our powerful report writer, almost any report can be produced to meet your needs. All of these reports, customized or basic, can be made available through FACS Web, so that you can view or print this information when needed. PRC is also one of a very few collection agencies nationwide that has obtained its PPMS (Professional Practices Management System) certification through the ACA (American Collectors Association). The benefit of this certification to our clients is that you can be assured that we have quality control measures in place. Our PPMS management team meets on a weekly basis to discuss Client Issues that have been brought to our attention. At this meeting, issues are discussed and action plans are formulated to ensure that we are meeting our Clients needs on a timely basis. Finally, as an important element of our commitment to quality, and to help assure the continuation of our success, PRC utilizes the services of Search Net Corporation, an independent consulting firm specializing in the Credit & Collection industry, for ongoing analysis and recommendations regarding quality management assurance. Search Net's President, Marc Trezza, who works directly with PRC's management staff, is considered the collection industry's leading expert on client service and quality control. He has published over 30 articles on agency management, speaks at many industry conferences, and conducts seminars nationwide. Mr. Trezza also works directly with many creditors to help them improve their agency relationships. Search Net's experience helps us to gain additional insights into ways to improve our services based on feedback from Account Managers all across the country. Again, our job is to communicate with you so that we understand your needs and requirements. We want to make you look good and make your job easier. | |
 | 5) Is your collection agency constantly innovating and investing its systems to increase its effectiveness, so they can spend more time making you money? At Professional Recovery Consultants, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year alone on technology and systems to enhance our capacity to serve our Clients' - and your customers' - individual needs. |
PRC's success depends on our ability to innovate our business systems through technology. Our software package is Ontario Systems' FACS (Flexible Automated Collection System), which runs on a Hewlett-Packard Integrity RX 3600. The FACS system is currently in use by over 200 agencies and facilities, and is one of the most flexible software systems in the industry. Customized and supported by our own IT staff, our software provides our collectors and Clients with current and complete information, while permitting management to consistently monitor and review work productivity, including "real time" monitoring. Our system provides the collector with automated payer follow-up including reminder and default letters, collector queuing, on-line notes, collection letters generated after case-by-case review, payment history, on-line credit bureau access, on-line skip trace information, remote client notes, management review, and many other features, including:
From a management perspective, the system graphs productivity, monitors collection by the time of day, provides a huge assortment of reports, permits legal follow-up, case load distribution, and menu driven queue sorts and prioritization, along with management review and intervention. As the needs and demands of our Clients change, FACS Web provides our Clients direct access to our system without any complicated set-up giving you secure, online, real-time access to your accounts. This product helps you to communicate your needs and desires to us by allowing you to view your information, statistics, make notes on accounts, report payments, place accounts, perform audits and much more, all Real-Time. You can do all this from the comfort of your office. Our system's "Tactics" feature enables management to set system PRC's "Tactics" system establishes how specific accounts (for example determined by pay class, such as Medicaid or Medicare) will move from one disposition to another, and sets the procedures and quality control checks and balances by which those accounts will be worked. We have the capability to monitor both collection calls and collection activity including client requests, dollars promised, contacts, attempts, etc. Through "tactics" accounts that fall within assigned criteria automatically receive management review. We have tailored our system to meet the ongoing challenge of collecting all stages of delinquent patient accounts through these difficult economic times, and provide our clients with the ever-tightening controls needed to thrive in a down-turned credit economy. PRC utilizes the very latest in cutting edge collection technology PRC's focus on productivity is supported by some of the finest technology available in the collection industry. Those technologies include PRC's predictive dialing system , called "guaranteed contacts" (G.C.), is fully integrated and on line with our collection software. Some of the exciting highlights of the predictive dialer are:
With a manual or basic auto dialer system, PRC's predictive dialers increase our productivity by automatically handling all mundane dialing tasks. Our system dials out on more lines than there are workstations, automatically sorting each call outcome into appropriate queues. Our system accomplishes this by passing only those calls that have been answered by a "live voice" to our collectors. Busy signals and no-answers are automatically placed in separate queues to be recalled on demand. Answering machines can be retried later or passed to an operator who will leave a message. By connecting our collectors to only those calls that have been answered, the predictive dialer gives our collectors more time to produce results, by spending their time doing what they do best: Talking to patients. For example, a patient who is difficult to reach may require 30 to 40 attempts to make a single contact. For an agency without a predictive dial system, contact is highly unlikely. With "G.C." however, we can dial an account hundreds of times, if necessary, to make contact. As a practical matter, after 30 or 40 unsuccessful attempts, our system will default the account to a management queue, where it will be reviewed and researched for a new contact number. Once a new number for the patient is identified, the account will be re-downloaded into the system, and our dialer will begin again. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems offer PRC's IVR system has a dual application. Patients may establish payment arrangements or check the status of their account interactively, without ever speaking to a live collector. Of course, the option to default to a live collector is available and will happen automatically under certain circumstances. Clients may access the IVR system to check the status of individual accounts or obtain placement and recovery statistics. Individual passwords are issued to clients to permit access. Voice Recording Technology ensures a complaint-free environment All collection conversations, outgoing and incoming, are recorded. Since initiating voice recording technology in 1995, complaint ratios have decreased significantly. Both collectors and patients are aware the conversation is being recorded, thus enhancing professionalism and civility. Unattended Messaging provides even more contacts to PRC This technology allows PRC to send out automated messages to your debtors. This is helpful because we can make phone calls when our office hours are closed but still within legal calling times. This automated message tells the debtor that they have a very important business message and to please call our office during business hours to discuss. Debtors can also be directed to our IVR system so they can make payment arrangements 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Right Party Contact System This technology allows for our agents to spend more time talking to right parties, greatly increasing their effectiveness. This system calls the numbers on a given account, verifies that the party on the line is the responsible or "right" party to pay the bill, then sends the account to a live agent. This process allows our collection agents to only speak to the correct person to pay the bill, eliminating answering machines, babysitters or any other person that may answer the phone. Our approach to searching for debtors utilizes PRC utilizes multiple approaches to finding debtors. Among the tools used are skip reports, credit reports, directory assistance, neighbor searches, NCOA scrubbing, Accurint, Insight America and Experian scoring and skip trace model. We have a dedicated team for skip-tracing that does nothing but locate debtors. Banko® allows us to identify banckrupties quickly PRC scrubs ALL accounts for bankruptcies before sending the first letter. This helps us identify all debtors with bankruptcies on file and determine whether a particular debt is covered in the bankruptcy filing. This process lessens the potential for lawsuit due to attempting to collect debts from a debtor with a bankruptcy on file. Emdeon improves our ability to verify insurance information This service is an online insurance verification service. This allows us to go online and verify insurance information without having to pick up the phone and get put on hold for long periods. We can also scrub all medical placements for certain payers, such as Medicaid. This service is quick and easy and allows us to discover potential third party money so you can recover your money, FASTER. PRC maintains security on all data, including backup systems PRC has implemented several measures to insure the security of our clients' data. All access to the computer system itself is protected by a multiple password scheme. If you are connecting to the system from outside of PRC, a password is required to get to the banner and normal user logon. PRC also uses a dual backup methodology. All of our Direct Access Storage Devices (DASD) are redundant. We maintain a complete backup of the live data. In addition, we do a complete backup nightly, which are archived for 2 weeks. Weekly backup tapes are archived for a month, and monthly tapes are archived for one year. Back up's are also saved offsite at EVault. Our Disaster Recovery Plan is maintained off site by TAMP Systems, Inc. Our software is supported 7 days a week, 24 hours a day by Ontario Systems. They access our system via modem or on-site, to handle any software problems or programming needs. We also have a systems manager on staff who has been with us since 1980. Hewlett-Packard supports our hardware 24 hours a day, which guarantees minimized downtime.
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