Were You Going Upstairs or Downstairs?

As the old saying goes, “You know you’re getting old when you are going upstairs or downstairs, stop halfway and then can’t remember if you were going up or down.”

Do you ever forget to buy the parts to fix the leaky faucet, schedule the carpet cleaner, call the day care center to notify them of your need to pick up Johnny early? Do you purposefully procrastinate the task hoping it will just go away? I never do that…(ha ha). Sound familiar?

Why do we have such a hard time remembering things? I think we have so much to remember these days; our heads are so full we can’t concentrate on what comes next — even though we have every possible electronic device to remind us. Sometimes we just forget to check our reminder systems or just ignore all the reminders we get. I wonder sometimes if some of us have scheduled into our iphone/ipad when to go to the bathroom next.

I’ll bet many times we just ignore commitments in hope no one will notice. I’ll also bet that debtors do the exact same thing. They commit to making a payment or a series of payments, and then hope that no one notices when they don’t meet that commitment. They are testing you, right?

Do you always have the time and resources to follow up on these debtors? Why not automate that reminder system? Not only will it help them to remember, but it will let them know you are not going away and expect them to fulfill their commitments.

IAT has the automation tools you need to make reminder calls easy. CT Center (site-premised system) and CT Impact Hosted Broadcast Messaging can both do it! CT Center has two pre-made messages (we call them dialogues) just for reminder calls. One message can give a “friendly reminder” message for an upcoming payment commitment, the other can give a “friendly reminder” that a payment commitment is now past due and gives options for a mailing address or to talk to an agent. CT Impact can also be used this way.

Following up on these payment commitments should not have to burden your agent’s time when automation can do the job. Let IAT’s reminder messages help debtors remember if they are going “up” or “down” the stairs and let them know you are still waiting for them at the end of the stairway.