(All the "Answers" are from an actual Q&A with Doug Fuller...I changed the Questions for fun!)
Q: Doug, what experience do you have with malfunctioning phone systems?
A: When I arrived at First Select (charged-off debt buying and collections subsidiary of Providian Financial), the first thing that I looked at was our dialer strategy.
Q: Like when someone dials the corporate number it just rings and rings?
A: It was painfully bad – we had an example of an account where 49 calls had been placed to the same phone number in the course of three weeks - all 49 calls covered a span of less than 90 minutes of the day.
Q: Maybe you should suspend the account of those pesky lenders calling Prosper customer support--just kidding, Doug!
A: (Laughs, writes something down)
Q: How about experience with disconnected phones?
A: We had another case where we made 61 calls to the same disconnected number.
Q: Lenders probably did the same thing today. How did you fix it?
A: The first step was to “stop the bleeding” – quit doing the really, really dumb stuff.
Q: That would be a great start!
A: (Laughs, but doesn't write it down)
Q: What did the phone company say when you contacted them?
A: If you won’t pay, but can (or will in the future) be able to pay, I’m going to sue you.
Q: Yikes! So step one is getting the phones reconnected and paying the bill?
A: (Nods)
Q: Step two must be fixing that problem where the phone rings and two customer support reps keep asking each other, "You gonna get that?" while it rings and rings.
A: The second step was to implement a well designed call coverage and rotation strategy. The first step bought us more than 20% improvement.
Q: How long did it take to get the phones working?
A: The second step took about 4 months to accomplish, but doubled our results.