How Trust, Technology, and Service Define Modern Collections Differentiation

Adam Parks (00:00)

Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with another Receivables webinar. Today I'm here with two really good friends, Jason Hinkle, Anthony Faldetta, here to talk to me about differentiating your business in a situation where some people might view your product as commoditized and

Creating those types of of differentiations, I think for each of them coming from the collection agency side and the payment side, I think people look from the outside at these products kind of the same way until you really get in there and start understanding what components make up a great payments or great collection product. 

So Jason, for anybody who has not been as lucky as me to get to know you through the years, can we start by telling everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Jason Hinkle (00:46)

Yeah, so I'm Jason Hinkle with Shepherd Outsourcing and the Owner of Shepherd. we are, you know, a third party collection agency by definition. we you know, I've been in the industry a long time, so you know, it's like 28 years now. you know, and just kind of worked my way through a few different agencies who, you know, taught me a lot about the industry, some great leaders in those companies and was able to you know, pull in what I learned from those folks and, you know, help build Shepherd. 

And you know, Shepherd is a it's a you know, an omnichannel agency. we're heavy on the front end with digital and with our people. You know, we invest a lot of time and money into our collectors and you're not now in today's environment, knowing that you don't quite need as many people with the digital help and the self-service but it's critical to have better people than we've had in the past. So yeah, it's in a nutshell, you know, who we are and my my road to getting here. 

But we're headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, and we have a near shore facility or offshore facility in Panama City, Panama.

Adam Parks (01:47)

And I have so many questions for you today, Jason. So we're gonna come back to that. But Anthony, for anyone who has not been to a conference before and had the pleasure of meeting you, could you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Anthony Faldetta (02:05)

Absolutely. So I started in the industry about 25 years ago, primarily selling letters. through that made some great contacts and serviced many hundreds of different collection agencies throughout the throughout the years. that has given me a lot of experience on basically what they need, what they're looking for. And as I transitioned to this payment processing side, I was able to leverage those relationships because people did earn, I did earn their trust and they believed what I was gonna deliver and we were able to go ahead and deliver that same product on the processing side to them. 

So I had the the the pleasure of having the same clients or similar clients across both sides of the fence here. and it's been great since so now  servicing the payment processing side of the business, we added couple of different partners throughout the years that have added some technology to help with those omnisource channels, texting emails, as well as just the basic processing of the payment.

Adam Parks (02:58)

Interesting. So yeah, a quick little story. Well, it look you've got two different kind of perspectives there. You've been on the letter side, which I think people early on viewed as like here, this is the same, you know, all letters are the same, but not all things are created equal, right? Same thing when it comes to payments. 

And so I in our industry I I've been quoted as saying many times that, you know, collection agencies are 85% the same because 85% of what we do is regulated and that 15%, that strategic brain, that collaboration piece, that human-powered piece. That's that differentiator of that 15% of truly having it look and feel different. So Jason, you've you've worked at agencies, you now own an agency. You know, how do you make that 85% feel truly unique?

Jason Hinkle (04:38)

Yeah, it's a good question. And like when we when we first started moving into the the digital space, what kind of walking into the unknown, what we what I didn't realize was the amount of manual effort that was still required. So self service is a big part of it. and self service handles a lot of the low hanging fruit. but you know, customers, people still have a tremendous amount of questions before they give you your money or, you know, understand what the the debt is all about, whatever it is. 

So it dawned to me at that point that how critical it was to have really top quality people, you know, handling these calls because if it goes through, you know, if they're responding to some sort of electronic communication, and they've taken the time to either go to the payment portal or go to our website, you know, hit the you know, IVR, the bot, whatever, and still want to engage with the person, there's a high potential that that's gonna be a conversion. And so we need to make sure the people handling that call aren't just order takers and trying to burn insurance. 

So that 15%, you know, we we kind of set from go that we wanted to train our staff so they could really handle any situation. and whether that's domestically or in Panama, they're all trained the same way, and you know that customer experience that we provide to that customer helping convert those payments. And we see a you know our conversion rate has only gotten higher since we've implemented all this stuff. but we we see a a really high satisfaction rate. I know part of the topics for today is kind of talking about bringing in some metrics and you know, we we use metrics like customers consumer sentiment.

And things like that to really measure our agents to make sure like they the the calls that they're taking, the people on the other end of those calls are receiving it well and they don't turn into like escalated calls. Whereas, you know, 10 years ago, some of your better collectors, 80% of the calls they had turned into an argument, right? Because that was their tactic and that's what worked then. It's just a different time now. So that's that that's really I I think that the biggest takeaway from that question is just investing, continue to invest.

Adam Parks (06:50)

Well, and that that kind of echoes and I just posted in our our live chat here for anybody that's watching live the episode that I the Receivables Podcast episode I filmed with Jason a couple of months ago where we talked about the human power digital collections and what that means like at the intersection. And Jason, what I heard there too was also interesting from a differentiation standpoint in that you have a offshore nearshore facility that's you know wholly captive.

And at the same time, you're treating and managing that team as if they were right here in the United States. There's no differentiation to the management of it. And with your focus on people, it seems like that ties together quite nicely, right? Being focused on those people and being able to bring the talent in from multiple pools to be able to accomplish your your end goal. Do you look at it kind of the same way? 

Like in terms of create you know, treating your captive team the same as your US team. 'Cause you don't see I mean, I try to do the same thing, but you don't see it every day.

Jason Hinkle (07:51)

Man, I tell you you have to. if you if you're not doing that, then you're doing yourself a disservice. And I'll give you kind of some background to it. We we tried when we first launched Panama, we tried to do it in a way that was like, Okay, we're gonna, you know, there's some value to this inventory, but maybe it it doesn't cover all the cost domestically, we'll push it out or segmenting it so they're they're working lower value inventory and the reason you don't work it here is because you can't keep people engaged on it, right? 

It's hard. Well, people are people. It doesn't matter what country you're in. if if you have someone on the phone in Greenville, South Carolina or Panama City, Panama, and they're making 300 phone calls a day and converting zero or converting one or whatever it is, that person's not going to around.

So the other side of it was we found that when we tried to put American managers in another country, that doesn't work either. so you know, Jason Hinkle's a great team leader in Greenville, South Carolina. It didn't necessarily translate to him going to Panama and being a great team leader because it's a different culture. You know, their primary language is not English. and you know, just all the things that come with that. 

So we learned the hard way that if okay, you know, the first thing is we had to do right was get the right manager in place, the right site manager, and then the team under that person to make sure that the training that we do here can be mimicked there. And yeah, it just takes a lot of audit and a lot of follow-up. I you know, I go to that facility at least every other month for a week. Just following up just like I do I'm in the office in Greenville every day, just like I do here. Talk to the the staff, I talk to the people. It is no different. 

I could take the agents we have in Panama, bring them to Greenville, and there would be no difference in how they work and operate and vice versa. And that has been a huge accomplishment, a lot of work, but a huge accomplishment to making sure that no matter what, the customer and the client are going to get service the same no matter where the inventory is being placed.

Adam Parks (09:34)

I mean, it's definitely a challenge to manage globally on that same level. But when you're not looking at that service as a cost savings and you're looking at it as an extension of the business, I think it becomes easier. But that's one of those differentiators. Now, Anthony, from your perspective, you have people that look at payments, for example, and they're like, Well, I'm gonna process the payment, right? 

Like it's, they're not thinking about the building blocks that become of it. And in the session that you and I did with Chris Compton, I got a little bit more of an education of what that payment network ultimately looks like and what goes into that. But how do you look at creating differentiation when the marketplace looks at your product as more commoditized?

Anthony Faldetta (10:40)

Yep, so it's good question. So our world is I'm gonna say the same thing you said to Jason's, about 85% of it is commoditized, right? 'Cause it's fortunate and unfortunate at the same time where most of the payment processors today use the same Rails, right? USAepay, Merchant e-solutions, whatever it may be. 

Well, I'm fortunate enough to have partnered with a processor/slash bank that has their own gateway, that's one of the major differentiators. So that now you're only dealing with one phone call if there's an issue, not multiple different phone calls to try to find where the issue may be. So processors kind of come into the into the mix and they kinda, you know, rebrand and resell. And that's what we're trying to steer away from and just stick to a sole solution that's gonna provide a holistic approach to give everybody the omni channel of hey, use us to process your payment, but our partner here can do the texting and emailing and et cetera, et cetera. 

That's tied that ties into all the systems. So those are the that's a one major approach that we're looking at, which is basically technology, right? Having the best technology that's available to the industry that's gonna be able to 'cause again we only focus on this industry. ⁓ so as we're as we're integrating further deeper into other software platforms we call ISVs, we are expanding that network and we're able to partner with you know, we have many partners that are across the board to do all of these different things that integrate with our gateway. And that's all proprietary, right? 

So that that's a major part. The second part is, you know, again, earning people's trust. I've done that throughout the years. in in my previous life and I've been doing this now for a few you know, a few years. And during the the big the beginning sessions of of going into this, it's about, hey, look, this is what I can do for you and this is how I could do it. And guess what?

If I didn't deliver what I was gonna say, I wouldn't be sitting here at this desk having this conversation with you going forward. So it really becomes about earning your customers' trust and having customers  refer you to their peers to to gain that to keep expanding on that you know, that network of web of network. so that's those are the real factors. You know, that  that customer level that, you know, somebody calls me, you know, Jason can, if he wants to can attest to it or not, but he'll call me, he'll say, Hey, I gotta do it deal with this. Where is it? 

And you know, he's he's gonna get a response, you know, really quick. I we don't sit on things, we don't let things linger. so our response rate is super high, our customer server service is compared to none. And those KPIs that we implement for those specific touch points are what differentiates us at at that level.

Anybody could process a payment, anybody can send out a letter, anybody can collect out on debt. It's who do you trust that's gonna manage your work the way you want it to be managed? Who do you trust that's that that's gonna that's gonna, you know, pick up the phone when there's an issue? Who's gonna you know, and and and let's be real. We're we're in a world where there's gonna be an issue, it's just a matter of when. And how is it gonna be handled? Is it gonna be handled with kid gloves?

Or is it gonna be just shoveled under the desk under rug and let's move on and let's keep going moving forward. You know, and people select us for the because they know that we're gonna put our best foot forward and we're gonna solve the issues as quickly as possible and truthfully, right? That's the biggest factor, truthfully. Showing them the corrective actions that have been done so it doesn't happen again, because we don't like to repeat mistakes. We wanna repeat the the the imper the per the perfect process, not the imperfect process. 

So all those different imperfections that we capture, we've implement in our process to go ahead and streamline it for the next time so it doesn't happen again. And I'm sure every good business does this and if you're not doing these things,  you don't deserve the business. To be honest with you, my opinion, you know, that goes across to any type of business as well, for that matter.

Adam Parks (14:17)

Well, we have I mean we success is rented, right? Like in the rents do every day. We gotta give we gotta make the things happen. But I think it's that trust and relationships that's been I mean, it's been a big part of my business through the years, my ability to just do the right thing regardless of the cost, right? Always making sure that we're executing and doing that right thing. And I think that's one of those big differentiators. 

And since you guys are working, you know, in financial services and with all of the things that are associated with it. Give me an example of of when you know having a good relationship kinda helped resolve an outstanding issue. Any like specific examples you can think of?

Anthony Faldetta (14:59)

Me, yeah, absolutely. So a couple of weeks ago there was an issue with one of the gateways. they weren't processing payments. they were down for for almost two days. So when you're down, that's you you you're talking about people's money is just sitting there lingering, right? So depending on the size of the agency that you are, if you're doing a million dollars a month, you know, do the math, divided by twenty, that's how many that's you you're down by two days. 

You could be fifty thousand, hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars that's just sitting someplace not getting back and when the accountant comes into work and they're expecting to get that deposit and they don't get it, now full panic is across their company. Where's my money? Who  how where's it sitting? Is it gonna be resolved? How's it gonna get settled? You know, et cetera, et cetera. 

So you know, the the first thing they do is they call in in a panic and they call one of us. ⁓ and when they call us, we we  and this happened is the first thing the owner said to me was, I just wanted to hear your voice. Right? 'Cause he 'cause he he he's like I cause at the end of the day he wanted to make sure that things are happening the way they're supposed to happen, right? So I got you. I'll I'm I'm figuring it out. We'll we'll make the phone calls and we'll get we'll get back to you. 

We we made those phone calls to find out the gateway was up the next day and then he got all his full deposit on that on that on that next day and that was it. So that's one of the reasons why we created our own gateway as well, by the way, just as a as a corrective action over time. So not everybody has migrated to our personal gateway, which is fine. You know, it's a lot of work to do something like that. 

But you that's a that's one of the typical examples that happened of recent and I don't wanna quote the the client 'cause he may he may may but he was it was he was like he's like you know, again, just the the comfort level that he heard when he heard my voice, 'cause he had texted me, I didn't respond to the text right away. And then he had called me, then I picked up the phone call right away. 

That's like, I wanted to hear your voice. Well what's going on? Like you you good, don't worry, everything's gonna be okay. You know, then once it all settled, he was like, Okay, I understand now, thank you. 

You know, and that's, that's a comfort level that people want that they need. They need to you know, especially when you deal with money. They wanna know that it's okay.

Adam Parks (16:47)

My god. Well, we have a fear of the unknown. I that's the biggest fear that we can have is is what we don't know is happening. And just that trust and reassurance I would think would be a a major differentiator in being able to bring some level of comfort to to know that there's somebody on the other side of the phone who's gonna do the right thing now, not just close up shop 'cause there was an issue and and now I, things to worry about. But I mean both of you guys have been around for more than a decade. So those relationships start to run deep as you spend more time with people. And we learn from those experiences. Go ahead, Jason.

Jason Hinkle (17:29)

I think trust i the is the right word, right? You know, one of the one of the terms I use around here is equity, right? So you build, you know, through the years of building that relationship and the years of clients being able to trust you, you know, you build that equity with that client. So they know when there is an issue, how you're gonna respond and you know how they're gonna respond. 

Now typically in my seat the issues are typically on my end versus my client's end, although that does happen on occasion. but it's if you have that trust with the client to and you know open lines of communication where, hey, you know, here's the issue we had, you know, here's what we did to resolve it, and here's why it won't happen again, et cetera, et cetera. 

It's kind of your basic, you know, troubleshooting skill and, you know, how you resolve things, but it takes a lot of time to get to that point where it's not, you know, bells and whistles and sirens going off because  you have demonstrated over the past year, two years, five years, ten years that you're reliable and you're gonna fix it. Whatever it is.

Adam Parks (18:33)

Well comfort level is a real thing and when we can feel that level of comfort and you know, we've got that relationship and that warm and fuzzy. Like I know I know if I get on the phone with Anthony he's solving whatever problem it is that we're facing and he's probably not gonna stop unless there's a bee in the way. you know, until he's got a f until he's until he's got a final solution in hand. 

But I you know, when we start thinking about that, right, like being able to to manage and maintain that level of trust and, I mean, it can only come from the experiences of solving problems together and have having faced some issues, but no system is perfect. No sys- you know, there's there's a thousand moving parts and vendors on top of vendors when we look at our technology stack. So somebody to take accountability and responsibility for the service being provided, I think, is what develops that level of trust. And a diligent business owner who's part of their client relationships generally is gonna be able to maneuver their organization, organization to solve problems pretty quickly. 

And I think that's one of those differentiators versus, you know, someone who's passively invested in a business versus guys like you that are like that live and breathe it every I'm I'm willing to bet by midnight last night each of you had some sort of an idea about what you were going to implement today.

Adam Parks (20:03)

But that but I think that's one of those differentiators that it's important to point out is that you know when we have that type of of passion and self-drive. I did my master's thesis on Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y management. Some people work hard for their own self-satisfaction, other people work hard enough not to get fired. It sounds kind of harsh, but can you think of anybody from any point in your life that doesn't fall into one of those two camps?

Anthony Faldetta (20:29)

Well, yeah, it's everybody I know. I could f I could categorize everybody for sure. There's no question. No question. Yeah.

Adam Parks (20:34)

Right. Like you can categorize the whole world based on that. And so when you've got those folks that work hard for their own self satisfaction and truly love their business, for me, those are the relationship those are the people that I want to work with, right? People do business with the people they like because they develop that trust, they develop that comfort. 

And when real problems arise, those relationships is what holds deals together long term. Because something's going to go wrong. Quality's gonna deteriorate on the portfolio like the something is going to happen and being able to identify that something has happened. And I think being an early warning system for some of that is also one of those ways in which you develop trust. 

Because if you called me every time that there was an issue with your website, you wouldn't feel comfortable and confident. You're comfortable and confident knowing that I'm gonna respond to those issues each and every time before they ever make it to you. And I think that's where that level of trust starts to be develop the proactivity of it all, I think is one of those major pieces.

So as we think about kind of creating a a differentiator, you know, for a business like payments, and we've talked about the we've kind of talked we've talked about everything but the cost structure of it all, right? And I realize that you do compete on cost, but I feel like that's probably one of the smaller aspects of how you create differentiation. I mean, it's probably the most obvious, but you know, talk to me a little bit about that balance between the cost of services and the quality of services being provided.

Jason Hinkle (22:07)

Yeah, I I mean from my perspective, It's a tough question, right? Because  in my world, you know, it's it's contingency based, right? So you're only you're only as good as what you collect. you know, and sometimes the the fee rates that you're working with are prohibitive. And and I think that's where it you know, where you have to have a lower cost solution. for all the clients out there listening, digital is not a lower cost solution, right? So it is cheaper than hiring a hundred collectors. 

But you know, the inventory typically doesn't require a hundred people on it. So when you're when you're looking at, you know, the the weight of it, it it's really about an investment. It's not it's like buying a house, right? So I am  gonna make the investment into this client up front, you know, take it on the chin for however many months I need to take it on the chin before we start turning a profit.

But we're still going to provide the same level of service. And this kind of goes back to the other question you asked about trust and what I would call equity. So if a client sees that, okay, that we know it's gonna take six to twelve months to ramp up to you know profitability, but they are they're pushing forward like they are profitable, investing their own money into the inventory, then that goes a really long way at month 13.

As you start growing with that client, when they start looking at, okay, we need to add someone to a new market. Yeah, now not everyone can do that. And I and I understand that. And I've been in a position where I wasn't able to do that. We're not there anymore, but that is how I've seen growth in the last couple of years is making up, you know, putting in that really excuse me, really heavy upfront investment to grow it for the next, you know, 13 plus months. And that's been a winning strategy for us.

Adam Parks (23:28)

That's interesting. Anthony, how about from from your side?

Anthony Faldetta (23:59)

Where so just where growth came from, again, it's going to being visible, right? Making sure that you people know what you're doing, how you're doing it, coming in and and somewhat investing in in the new technology that I had mentioned earlier. then we have to translate that into in a message somewhere. So we that we're sending out newsletters, we're doing all that all those that all the information that we typically do to go ahead and communicate with prospects and customers that you do for us actually.

So, most of our growth  again comes from being persistent, a making sure that you stay relative because although you may not be important today, you will be important tomorrow. Right. So the follow up is is is for us is is tremendous 'cause once a client does come aboard with us, there's not much upselling that's that's done unless you unless they wanna expand on some omni channel communications with emails and text. So it you they kind of sit stagnant.

So that that part of it stays so at that point you have to just keep boarding more and more clients, right? So ⁓ the the exposure to the industry, making sure they're aware of what's out there, making sure the solutions that are in place are there for this industry specifically, that whole communication factor is huge. showing your face at the trade shows, making sure that you're there at the at the at the larger national ones, also huge.

Making sure that tech the technology is up to par with what the industry needs. You know, right now there's a lot of a big push for digital payments, Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, all those different and we have all those in place. so with with short code, text going out, emails going out, we could send a link to the page and bring that back. 

All that is investment along with coddling prospects and clients to making sure that they know what they have available to you, right? And how does it coincide with what they need to get done at that point? I hope I answered your question. Did I answer your question? Is that your question? Yeah.

Adam Parks (25:50)

Yeah, no, it does. I well, I start thinking about the difference between the service and the technology itself, right? And and how much of the sales cycle is is really about the the tech options that are available and how much of it is about the customer service. Because I think from a technology standpoint, there is I mean, there how big of a difference is there between USAepay and the next gateway, right? In terms of functionality, but you know, having that redundancy, I also think is important because we've all been through problems with our payment processors in a past life, right? 

Like Operation Choke Point and whatnot. What do you what options do you make available for folks to protect themselves? Like what insurance policies do they have to kind of watch that? Are you doing redundancies? Like what what kind of options are available to to keep an agency's cash flow going, right? Like it's the lifeblood of the whole business.

Anthony Faldetta (26:20)

Right. So redundancies are in place. So we could with the with different Rails. Again, we have our own private Rails, which is the our own private gateway. So that that isolates some of the issues. So we could use the typical USAepay, gateways or other gateways as well with other banks. So using the one processor, using we could have multiple gateways, multiple banks offering you that offering those redundancies across different  Rails or platforms.

But still using the same core processor. Keeps things simple, keeps things organized that way as well. how does that keep it organized? You're not getting everything retokenized, you're getting you know, it's all kinda like done with through the this one solution. so those redundancies are in place. can we offer deeper redundancies across other banks? It's all the same thing that we just kinda talked about. So it's you really you know, it's either a rail at a bank, that's, that's a conversation. That those two mo- in and a processor or those are three the three parts. So if you do that multiple times across different Rails and banks, there's your redundancy in in all reality. 

So that's a it's a it's a again, that's a simple thing. It's a commoditized thing. that part of it is certainly unless you use your own gateway that can accept the digital payments that these other ones that we mentioned earlier don't accept. Right? That there's the key factor. So those are the differences there.

You know, listen, at the end of the day we could we could always look to expand on adding, you know, some other our own texting solution or our own emailing solution, but now you're impeding and competing with your partners and that always gets gray. And we never wanted to really do that, right? 

So we wanted to isolate ourselves and st- like, you know, use the word stay in our lane and then partner with the right people in the industry so everybody can kind of do their own thing and refer to each other. And that's that's one of the key factors in what we've done to to also help grow, having referrals.

Adam Parks (28:17)

Well, hyper focus on the service that you provide, I think, is a you know, is a great niche str- yeah, it's a it's a great niche strategy to control as much of the spaces you're looking for. And for those of you that are watching live right now who think we're talking about train tracks or whatever else, I did just post the episode that I did with Anthony and Chris Compton talking about payment Rails in the background and breakdown of how payments actually flow from the consumer's credit card to the bank's bank account in the end.

So I posted that one to the chat as well for anyone who has questions and encourage anybody that you know, encourage those of you that are watching right now to ask questions and I'm happy to field them for these guys as we continue to kind of go through our topic.

The next thing I I wanted to kind of bring up was those internal KPIs. And my question is not so much what KPIs are you watching, because you guys are operating different kinds of businesses, but how much of the KPIs that you're watching day to day are, let's call it operational in capacity, and how much of that is servicing the customer themselves. Right? So like watching or monitoring for what the customer's needs are versus just the product.

Does that make sense?

Jason Hinkle (29:41)

Yeah. I mean most most of the KPIs that we monitor are operational. You know, we look at your your basic KPIs, although those are changing, right? They're a little bit different. For example, like number of calls made per day isn't quite as important as it once was because we're not as reliant on the outbound channel. Yeah, something simple like that, but from a customer perspective, you know, this kind of goes back to what I said earlier, a metric that we monitor closely is like the agent and the customer sentiment. So we're we're looking at like on the phone calls that we get, what is you know, what's happening? Is our is the is the customer be are they pretty well flat with last month? Are they unhappier? Are they happier, whatever? Like for example.

During tax season, we always see a spike in customer sentiment because it it's usually a less combative conversation. I got a tax return, I'd like to pay my bill. Great. Boom, boom, boom, we're done. Whereas you get into the you know December time frame, the sentiment of the customer usually drops some because you know they're stressed with bills or they're stressed with the holidays, whatever it is, right? But the the important metric to that is when you overlay the agent sentiment, right?

Does the agent sentiment follow that same flow? Because it never should. The agent sentiment should always be a flat line. And so we're looking for those outliers, right? So that's one thing we view for the customer on the people side. On the digital side, it it's really about kind of responses to surveys, Google reviews, things like that. Are are they getting the treatment that they want? 

And you know, like the the five star thing is a huge deal, especially as we get more and more down this path of being digital, like that is Shepard Outsourcing, someone we want to talk to. They got five stars on Google, they must be legit. I mean it's it's pretty much kind of that simple. so that is a an external metric that we we pay attention to as well. So those are the kind of things that are are important. You're you're you know it you know whatever. I think it's a tax, but the the Better Business Bureau ranking.

You know, it's one of those things when you when you look at those complaints and those rankings, if you will, that they do hold some water with the customer, right? And the customer wants to know that, okay, this is a legitimate business and you know they've been accredited through the BBB or whatever it is. So those kind of metrics are are very helpful to to make sure the customer is not only getting what they want, but they're seeing what they need to see and that you're a legitimate.

Adam Parks (32:05)

Reputation management is real. I mean, ten years ago collection agencies didn't even want to have a website. Now we're sitting here talking about five star Google reviews for collection agencies. Just wanna just wanna point out that giant dynamic shift in my life in the last ten years.

Jason Hinkle (32:26)

It is.

Anthony Faldetta (32:34)

Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Jason Hinkle (32:40)

Dude, it's ten years. It's been like four. You know, it's crazy how quickly it's happened.

Adam Parks (32:43)

Yeah, I've been screaming about it for ten years, but I think like we kinda caught up about four years ago when it became a real thing. I mean, look, even in the last two years, we've changed the way that we build websites and communicate with consumers. 

It used to be very focused on here's why you should give me your paper and why I'm trustworthy, but all of the trust signals were written for the creditor when it's the consumer that you need to develop the trust with, because you don't sell collection agency services on your website. I mean, most organizations are not. That's done through personal relationships, RFIs, there's a process, right? Depending on who the the ultimate creditor is. So a lot to to kind of unpack from that perspective.

But Anthony, how about you? Are you are you watching, you know, customer are you watching response times to your customer more than anything else? I mean, I'm sure you're watching dollar volumes, but I'm just curious.

Anthony Faldetta (33:28)

Yeah. So I'm more customer focused, right? So I'm all about making sure that getting all that questions answered and making sure that they have all the information that they need to get through their day. Right. So that's my main focus KPI. When I get into my desk, I making sure all the emails are answered. 

If they're not, I'm pinging everybody, making sure the answers are coming through. That's like a main thing. the other part of it is making uptime, right? So we have uptime for gateway, uptime for processing, the the bank,  the different components that the three different components. I want to make sure all those are up.

So we get pings on that. We we manage that. Then of course the dollar amounts, right? We're going in, making sure that that there's no irregular irregular irregularity within any specific customer, making sure that their tolerances are right, making sure that they're you know,  it's assuring that hey, I saw that you took a 10,000 payment yesterday, you asked for the this acceptance.

Is this gonna be a regular thing? Should we go to the bank and ask for a higher acceptance rate for more often? Things like this, right? So being able to assure that our customers are gonna be able to process a payment,  even at those higher volumes, at a one-time instance, maybe make it more frequent kind of a thing. So that's where I really focus on. I I focus on customer interaction, customer needs, and assuring what the uptimes are, right. 

As soon as something goes down, the whole world knows about it, so then everybody is all hands on deck. So it that's that's that's without saying. But for the most part, like you know, we're 99.999% up, which is great. And the one or two days a year that there is an issue, we have it resolved pretty quickly, which is great. So with with an explanation, which is the important part, right? So and not forgotten about.

Adam Parks (35:10)

No, helping them understand what happened, I think, is mission critical and it's part of every audit remediation plan. So if something goes wrong and it's a security incident or whatever the case may be, we all have our polic- we all have our very detailed policies and procedures that we're, you know, all following. And so I there's there's a lot of  check boxes that have to come back to it. 

But, you know, and I'll kind of float this one to both of you guys, but what's one process that you've kind of redesigned in the last 12 to 18 months from a customer service that's really helped you to improve your customer experience. The people that are buying directly from you. So Jason, in your instance, more about like the the the bank or the debt buyer, less so than the consumer, but what have you guys been working on to help improve that flow and relationship at that level?

Jason Hinkle (35:57)

Well, you know, our industry is always evolving, right? So I think it is giving our clients access, more access to us, I guess would be the the biggest improvement that we've made in the last few months. So for example, you our our compliance management system. 

Yeah, we have made it so that our clients can we can provide them a log on and they can get into our compliance management system and see the policies and SOPs and whatever that kind of govern us, audits, things like that. It, you know, there's still a lot of adoptance that needs to take place there. a lot of clients still want to, you know, pull down FTP and whatever. But for the clients who do use it, they've found great value into saying, All right, you know, how does Shepard do X? And they can just go in and and look at it. 

So I don't think we're gonna get to the point anytime soon where we're just you know linked in through VPN tunnels to each other's data. ⁓ But I think there are certain things that we can not only make easier for our clients, but make easier for ourselves. Like there's no secrets anymore, especially when it comes to your policies and procedures, those are gonna keep you, you know, out of hot water, you know, defending lawsuits with them, things like that. So I think that's a really safe place to start. We've seen that. and you know that's been one I think really good improvement that we've made.

Adam Parks (37:25)

I like hearing that. How about you, Anthony? Any customer-facing updates to your organization?

Anthony Faldetta (37:31)

One of the major ones is hiring you, right? We hired you. You helped us out. Little plug for Adam. That's been great. getting getting in front of the right people is very important, right? so we've added some marketing dollars to our budget and, you know, adding the LinkedIn feeds, the the trade show or speaking at the ACA, all those different steps to get in front of the customers to first and foremost I want to help educate the cus- the the industry because I still think that there's a lot of companies that are out there that are taking advantage of agencies, overcharging them. 

So it's just a matter of getting to those people so I could show them an analysis. and I think that you're helping me with that, which is great. As well as during th through other referrals. and that's the key factor is is bringing getting getting that attention, getting to be more visible, as I mentioned earlier. And that's the one thing that we definitely added this past year. New updated the website, like all that all that all you know, 'cause the things that we talked about, like Jason said you have to have a five star Google rating. Well, we just had a website that was up and linked to nothing. So it wasn't doing us anything. 

So, you know, again, through your help you we were able to get that rolling. so those are the things that we've it sounds basic, but as basic as it is, it's still very important to make sure that it's still functioning and doing. So we're doing it and we're gonna keep going down this path. and we're gonna do whatever we can to keep staying visible and relevant to with the content and and showing people where they can outline some savings, making sure they have the right technology, doing a free analysis of their processes to assure that, hey, look, by the way, you're not doing texting. 

You can do texting through this portal if you chose to, using our payment gateway or whatever, blah, blah, and you could add digital payments if you chose to, just to try to help them collect more money, because the the journey for the for the for the for the debtor has to be seamless.

So as and and I'm I'm gonna speak as if J is my client, right? So if J, if my client is a debtor and I'm talking to you and saying, hey listen, you you gotta talk to this guy for a text, talk to that guy for an email, talk to you know, as opposed to making it a seamless process, I'm gonna send out a text, the guy makes it clicks at the the the portal, the the link on the email or t or or or text, the link goes right to the portal, you do another click on your phone, you have an Apple Pay or Google Pay, fills out the information and it's done. 

That's a very simple journey to get that payment captured. That journey is the that that that experience makes it that much easier for someone to go ahead and replicate as well. So the more you replicate it, the more you're you're you're you're going through that process, the more money you can collect. And that's what we want to bring to the table for people. You know, making sure they have this intelligence and and exposure to the technology to make them give their debtors the right journey in a payment journey.

Adam Parks (39:51)

Well you you bring up some really good examples there from a technology standpoint about Apple Pay and Google Pay and I don't I don't think the convenience, because it is about the convenience, but it's also goes back to the trust because the consumer's level of trust with Apple and Google is high. 

And so if that process, if that if I'm gonna buy something and I can use shop dot com app versus going to random websites and providing payment information, well, I'm more likely to make that purchase if it's through one of those consolidated apps or if I can buy the product on Amazon because trust is higher from a consumer standpoint when we look at that.

So, you know, artificial intelligence is the the topic of the year and probably for the last two years here. Are you guys doing anything internally to start experimenting with these tool sets to improve, whether it be the customer or the client experience?

Jason Hinkle (41:06)

The customer experience, yes. You know, we have partnered with company to develop a a bot just you know for us. So it's not something you can go buy on the market right now. And that's been from a a customer perspective, giving them access to their information 24x7, either through chat or through voice, has been monumental, right? It's it it's not only a payment channel, but it's also a way for a customer to file, you know, let us know about a dispute or fraud or whatever it might be, or just inquire about questions and then the bots can handle you know those you know low level questions and so on. so internally for clients, no. 

There, I think I don't what the security around AI, I think, is underestimated. as we have gone to deploy it internally just for efficiency purposes. I mean, it is like launching a brand new network. And everyone, you know, I mean, LLMs are just thirsty for data, right? They you know, they want the best data, they wanna answer all the questions, not hallucinate and all the things.

And so if you're not in a box where like you're not sharing your data with the world, then I would highly suggest you dig into that because that I think that is the next biggest thing in cybersecurity. If it's it's not the next, it's already happening, where you know, bots are fighting bots for cybersecurity and things like that. 

And if you're not, you know, if your bot isn't as strong as their bot, your bot's gonna lose, and that means you're gonna lose. So that that's where we've spent a ton of time so far is, you know, we're we're using it, yeah, and it's secure, but we're using it very minimally to service clients. It's really more about the the the call bot, right? And then the how do we make ourselves more efficient internally before we can really apply something to the client.

Adam Parks (43:14)

Well, it sounds like from a client perspective, you've been very focused on self service, giving them access to more, create more compliance data, like giving them more access to going and do it themselves. And that's kind of been my approach right now as well. I think from an AI customer service perspective, the only thing that I've really identified would be of value is within my custom like within my client portal providing a bot that can answer questions. Right. 

Some of the basic stuff, like just because it's there and it's in the chat and it makes it a little bit easier. And, you know, we've rolled out a a an AI receptionist to handle the incoming flow of calls. I don't know how it's doing from a customer service perspective but my spam has dropped about 98%. So that you know there's there's something to be said for that.

Jason Hinkle (43:56)

Absolutely. Well, and you know, like we were talking earlier about the the CMS channel we've applied to clients. There is an AI feature in that where they can you know just ask, Hey, what is what is Shepard's policy on the Mini Miranda? Something simple and it it'll point to the policy and kind of give the blurb. So there's stuff like that, but I wouldn't say it at a massive scale. 

Yeah, it's coming. ⁓ it it's certainly coming. and it's it's awesome to watch and see and use and it's really exciting for a guy like myself and you know, where I've always been reliant on you know analysts or IT guys to say, Hey, give me this data, let's see what this looks like retroactively, where with a command prompt I can do it in about 30 seconds, it's pretty slick. So that kind of stuff's really exciting.

Adam Parks (44:38)

I've been big into the prototyping or being able to leverage, you know, Claude and and Perplexity to actually build proof of concept.

I mean, they're not fully functioning applications, but it's enough proof of concept to where it used to take me a year in that dev cycle of going around and around with the architect and the dev team to determine what we actually wanted. And then I don't know about you, Anthony, but I don't know what I want 'til I see it. 

So I gotta see eight hundred different versions of this dashboard before I'm willing to say that this is what I want. I 'cause I couldn't draw it on day one if I wanted to. Right.

Anthony Faldetta (45:06)

Yeah. Tangible is important for sure. Yeah. Being tangible, you being seen, then you can always make different renditions from it. And it's the best part about the AI feature too though. You could keep re uploading all those different dashboards or whatever it is and it'll keep spitting out different renditions for you. It's pretty slick. Yeah, it's definitely it's definitely technology. I was watching Jeff Bezos last night on CNBC and he was he was very, you know, how we're gonna be in space, we're gonna have data centers in space and we're gonna go to Mars and we're gonna have people in Mars and then from there we're gonna I mean the moon first and then we will be in Mars and it's like you know this this could we could be in the moon with data centers in our lifetime. You know, that's how that's our that's pretty that's how fast this is moving. 

So it's it's gonna be interesting to see how it all plays out and how each level of of you know technology could be added to enhance someone's job. You're not looking to get rid of anybody. You're just looking to make someone that much more productive, right? So if someone can if someone could if someone could go ahead and collect, you know, a thousand dollars a day, now you want them to collect three thousand a day. And if AI can help that, that'd be fantastic, right? Somehow, somehow. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Jason Hinkle (46:17)

And they can do it in less time, which is what's amazing. Yeah, it's what we're seeing.

Adam Parks (46:18)

Yeah. Well, when you can empower like and and Jason, this goes back to the podcast we did together, but like when you can empower the people and make the super agent by feeding them with co-pilot information and providing them with the data on the fly, shortening their note taking time period post call and making sure that that's all organized and structured data, I think is a differentiator of the future. But those organizations that are looking at it now, I think are the ones that are really gonna be able to provide the best services in the future.

Because the learning and the mistakes and all the pieces that go into that success have to exist. And even though computing power is becoming less expensive and there's other opportunities here, there's some there's some limitations as to to what we're gonna be able to do in the short term. So just something to to consider as we as we continue into the future of some of this technology.

So gentlemen, with all of that being said, is there anything else about differentiating your business that we did not cover today that we wanted to make sure that we discussed?

Jason Hinkle (47:23)

Yeah, yeah, I think from my perspective, you you just gotta be sure you position yourself as someone that clients want to do business with. You know, you're you're you're partners in a lot of ways, right? And no one wants to partner with someone they don't like, no matter you know, how good they are necessarily. You know, and if it's if it's an even race, they're always gonna lean towards the person that they feel is a better partner.

Or to like drill it down even further, the person they like more, right? ⁓ and so you know, not in change of personality or anything like that, but you know, just make sure whoever is talking to your clients, whether it's you or you know, client service manager, whatever it is, just make sure that relationship is super strong, otherwise it's gonna be tough to.

Anthony Faldetta (48:10)

Easy to communicate with for sure. I would I would emulate everything Jason said and just make sure that your whoever's interfacing with your clients is very easy to communicate and listens. Right? Stop talking and listen. Listen to what the client wants, listen to what the client needs, translate that into an action item, make that action item executable and deliver it back to the client. That's as simple as it is.

Adam Parks (48:14)

Well, it sounds simple when you say it out loud like that, Anthony, but that is an everyday commitment to your business, right? To actually be able to make that a reality and to commit to it is so much more than just words. 

But gentlemen, this has been a fantastic discussion. I I think it's it's something that I haven't I've been saying for years, but have never really discussed with a group. Like, what is it like to be so similar as organizations and to create differentiation in the small space that we're given to be creative as debt collectors or payment processors.

Jason Hinkle (49:04)

I agree, man. Great conversation. I appreciate the time.

Anthony Faldetta (49:06)

Yeah, thank you very much for allowing me to participate. It's awesome.

Adam Parks (49:11)

Well, thank you everybody for watching today. We appreciate all of the engagement that we've had here today live. I hope that you guys also will go take a look at the podcast episodes that I posted as well in the chat because I feel like these guys have a lot more to teach us and there's more that we can learn in those videos as well. 

So for those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask or comments, you can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn and YouTube and we'll be responding to those. Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss, you can leave those in the comments below as well.

And hopefully I can get these gentlemen back at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. But until next time, gentlemen, we appreciate you and thank you everybody for watching. We'll see y'all again soon. Bye, everyone.

Anthony Faldetta (49:53)

Thank you.