Collections is the hardest outbound work there is. The customer does not want the call, the agent knows it, and the pressure to recover runs against the obligation to behave properly.
Badly run collections desks damage brands permanently and have attracted serious criticism in Kenya, particularly in digital lending. Well run ones recover more. The difference is mostly process.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice — take proper advice on your obligations. But some things are clear enough to say.
Where the line is
Firm is fine. Harassment is not.
Firm looks like: a clear statement of what is owed, by when, what happens if it is not paid, and a documented record of what was agreed. A reasonable number of attempts at reasonable hours. Speaking to the person who owes the money.
Harassment looks like: calling repeatedly in a day, calling at night, threatening consequences you cannot deliver, abusing the person, and contacting their family, employer or contacts about their debt.
That last one deserves emphasis. Contacting third parties about somebody’s debt — their colleagues, their relatives, people in their phone — is the practice that has drawn the most criticism in this market. It is also usually counterproductive: it produces complaints and reputational damage rather than payment.
Rules worth setting in the system
Policy that depends on agent restraint will fail on a bad week. Put it in the configuration.
Attempt limits. A maximum number of calls per account per day, and per week. Set it in the dialler so nobody has to decide in the moment.
Calling hours. Reasonable daytime hours, enforced by the system, not by instruction. Nothing in the evening. Nothing on a Sunday unless you have a specific reason.
A cooling-off after a promise. If somebody promises to pay on Friday, nobody should ring them on Wednesday. That single rule improves both recovery and tone, because the customer learns that what they say is recorded and respected.
A do-not-call list that is actually checked. At the moment of dialling, not at import. People ask to be contacted differently between those two points.
What the agent needs on screen
The account, the balance, the history, and — above all — what was agreed last time.
An agent who opens with “you said you would pay 3,000 on the 15th and I can see that came in, thank you — can we talk about the rest?” is having a different conversation from one who opens by reading a balance. The first one gets paid more often.
This is the argument for logging every outcome properly: promise to pay, partial payment, dispute, wrong number, cannot pay now. Those outcomes should drive what happens next automatically, rather than sitting in a note nobody reads.
Recording, carefully
Record collections calls. It protects the customer and the agent, and it is the only way to resolve a later complaint about what was said.
Then be careful with the recordings, because they contain financial information about identifiable people. Set a retention period, limit who can listen, log playbacks. The policy to write is here.
The dialler question
Do not use predictive dialling for collections.
The customer answering to silence, then a pause, then a call about money they owe, is the worst possible opening. Preview dialling — where the agent sees the account and then places the call — is the right tool, because preparation matters enormously on these calls.
More on the three kinds of dialler here.
Measuring it without making it worse
Calls per hour is the wrong target. It rewards speed and produces exactly the behaviour that generates complaints.
Better: promises kept as a share of promises made. That measures whether your agents are having conversations people intend to honour, which is the actual job. Pair it with complaint volume, and look at both together.
One more thing
Train agents on what to do when somebody genuinely cannot pay.
It happens constantly, and an agent with no answer will either make a threat or make a promise, both of which cost you. Giving them a real option — a payment plan, a referral, a date to review — turns the worst call of the day into a manageable one.