Customer Collections Advisor (Litigation Team)

I work as part of a large department which deals with most aspects of the company's contact with customers, from dealing with queries, to sending out bills and ensuring we receive payment.  My particular team, based at Pity Me, deals with customers who haven't paid, won't pay or are unable to pay their bills.  I find it really interesting and varied. 

As you can imagine by the time a customer issue gets to our team, the letters we have to send can be quite strongly worded, and if I'm dealing with something it will go out with my name and direct dial number on, so I often have to deal with people who are angry or worried.  Part of my job is to find out as much as possible about a customer's circumstances by talking to them, checking the Land Registry etc. so that we can establish if they have the means to pay and make a decision on how best to deal with them. Unlike some other companies we try to help our customers. If they can't pay their water bills, it is likely they have got other problems so we use our links with the Citizens' Advice Bureau and Community Legal Advice, to point people in the direction of experts who can give them useful help and advice.

We have a number of jobs in the team that need to be done, we are all cross-trained so that we change tasks regularly.  There are five groups of tasks which we do on a rota basis - transfers, applications, interims, post and administration, so we are all busy.  The sorts of things I get involved with day-to-day include:

• arranging transfer of cases to local courts, which I do electronically;
• checking the Land Registry database and liaising with them when customers make payment;
• dealing with in bound calls;
• dealing with a great deal of post - in and out;
• providing redemption figures to solicitors;
• ensuring payments go to the cashiers
• preparing documentation and applications for court - these are long and detailed and have to be perfect;
• keeping customers and everyone involved in a case advised of what is happening, serving notices and copying orders etc within the civil procedure rules and to critical timescales. 

If one of my cases goes to a hearing, I will usually attend, which means that I represent the Company in court.  This generally happens a couple of times a month and I could have to drive in a pool car to any court in the North East of England. Generally the customer doesn't attend the hearing, but if they do, I would talk to them one-to-one to find out more about their case and their defence before the hearing takes place.

Obviously no-one goes to a hearing until they are ready to do so, when we have new starters they will always buddy up with someone else for several hearings to learn what to do.  I find this part of my job particularly interesting.

I have personal and team targets to achieve, for productivity, quality and accuracy, although in my job accuracy is the most important thing.  Targets are set in my annual appraisal and each day I have to complete a tally sheet to show what I have done that day.

I work normal office hours, with flexible working, but once a month we are asked if we want to do a voluntary evening shift until 8pm.  These evenings are good fun, lots of people volunteer and as there are competitions and prizes as well as a great atmosphere, you don't feel as if you are at work at all.  We are each given a queue of outbound calls to deal with such as speaking to customers who have broken promises, or to find out more information, or to try to encourage people to go onto a direct debit etc.

The team I work with is great and we really work well together.  I have a lot of variety in my job and I've been given lots of opportunities to get involved in different things including training new starters and doing presentations to other parts of the company about what we do in our team to improve how we all work together.