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Sergio Seplovich and John McNamara are now friends

July 26

John McNamara joined Brett Sivits's group

Collector Training Roundtable

This is an opportunity for those who are responsible for training front line collectors to discuss their unique issues.

July 7

John McNamara replied to Rocky McNatt's discussion 'Right Party Contacts %'

Chip has a great question. How do you define RPC. Is it a live, verbal contact with the consumer or someone with whom you can discuss the account? Are you including answering machines/voice mail that appears to belong to the right party. If you are…

May 21

John McNamara replied to Dudley Larus's discussion 'Home Agents'

Yes, but it seems to be growing at a fairly slow rate. In many cases it starts as an accomodation to experienced collectors who relocate away from the call center. With hosted dialing and collection applications like LiveVox, it's easy to set these…

April 22

John McNamara replied to Andrew Carey's discussion 'Where does one begin...?'

Welcome to the industry; it's a great one. I would suggest the following link: http://www.acainternational.org/ All the best, John

January 28

John McNamara replied to Michelle Dunn's discussion 'Getting paid in 2010'

Collections during the last 10 years gradually became like order taking. We contacted the consumer, and sent them out to borrow against thei inflated price of their home. They paid of the charged off debt, and reset their financials. Collections ha…

January 4

John McNamara joined Eric Foulk's group

FastData Users Group

The purposes of this group is a chance to ask questions about the product, get ideas, best practices, and suggest enhancements.

December 28, 2009

John McNamara joined JJ Hornblass's group

Open Source Party

Several open-source programs are gaining a foothold in collection technology. This group keeps track of what's happening in open source, and how to take advantage of it.

December 28, 2009

Profile Information

Corporate Title

Chief Marketing Officer

Company

LiveVox

City, ST

Roswell, GA

John McNamara's Blog

The New Playbook to Beat Recession

We are in a recession. Textbooks might not define it that way yet, but we are nonetheless. Having weathered the last real consumer recession of 1990-1991, I know how this will play out. Delinquencies and charge offs will rise. Agencies will see placements spin up by as much as 30%. Liquidation will plummet by as much as the same.

All variable costs will go up, and agencies, debt buyers and creditors will look for ways to increase contacts to keep up with increased volume. However, since average… Continue

Posted on August 6, 2008 at 10:00am —

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At 9:01pm on April 20, 2009, Richard Dote said…: John sorry just got this. I will call in the morning - Hope all is well

At 10:52am on April 6, 2009, Chris Clark said…: I see that you are with LiveVox now. I just left Collect America in Oklahoma.
Jonathan Richie was usually our contact

Do you still have your agency?

At 11:49am on March 2, 2009, Mary Wisniewski said…: Congrats on the Kurt Swersky Award, John. I just saw the release.

At 12:53pm on November 14, 2008, Gary Fair said…: Hey John, I never got a business card from you. Can you email me your contact info to gfair@college-net.com

I have a question for you.

Thanks,
Gary Fair

At 8:39pm on September 10, 2008, Nate said…: John,

I really enjoyed your article "The New Playbook to Beat Recession".

Nate

At 10:26am on August 6, 2008, John McNamara said…: The New Playbook to Beat Recession

We are in a recession. Textbooks might not define it that way yet, but we are nonetheless. Having weathered the last real consumer recession of 1990-1991, I know how this will play out. Delinquencies and charge offs will rise. Agencies will see placements spin up by as much as 30%. Liquidation will plummet by as much as the same.

All variable costs will go up, and agencies, debt buyers and creditors will look for ways to increase contacts to keep up with increased volume. However, since average payments per transaction will plummet, agencies need these contacts at the lowest possible cost.

The traditional approach was to buy a dialer, upgrade an existing dialer or add dialer licenses. Great solution…10 years ago.

Here’s the rub. Dialers are and have always been a binary purchase. You need to buy the dialer AND the telephony infrastructure (read: lines per agent) to make it hum. The best dialer in the world works only as well as the line capacity married to it.

Premise-based dialers are dead and dying not because of their technology, but because consumer behavior has changed and it simply takes more telephony infrastructure to maximize efficiency.

Ten years ago, a collector with two or three lines for outbound calling was as busy as he or she could be. Now, they need more horsepower to maintain right-party connects. Wait time is up. Moral is down. Today, to guarantee a premise-based dialer remains productive, you would have to buy 10 to 50 lines per agent. Who can afford that? Who wants to become a telephone company?

The future of contact management is virtual. Hosted systems add as many lines as necessary to ensure agents, your most expensive variable expense, are talking to RPCs at the highest rate possible without sacrificing quality. For virtual solutions to be the future, they must understand agent presence, which IVRs lacking an ACD fail to do.You need a product that knows agent status so RPCs aren’t left on hold and then hang up. The only sin as bad as underutilizing your collectors is losing precious RPCs.

During tough times, we reach for the playbook. The old playbook said to get a premise-based dialer. The new playbook demands a hosted solution that doesn’t tie up your cash during a time when cash might be tight. Premise dialers require big, up-front checks, while hosted solutions have basically no cost barriers to entry. For low volumes, hosted solutions charge in the range of $.05 per connected minute, ridiculously low.

Premise-based dialers are the tool we love to hate. We need them for contacts, but we hate them for their clunkiness, expense, tendency to break, and the need to repurchase every two or three years.

Add temporary, virtual capacity through hosted vendors that scale as you need them. Don’t write a big, up-front check for permanent solutions and technology that might not be relevant or needed six months or a year from now.

Hang on to your seats when we come out of this recession. Those high-FICO consumers in trouble now will start repaying their debts as soon as better times return. Tough and painful now, but good times ahead.

Chief Marketing Officer for LiveVox and chairman and founder of Fidelis Recovery Solutions, John McNamara is a 25-year industry veteran with experience in all phases of collection and recovery operations with intense focus on technology applications. John was previously COO for AMO, SVP of Operations for Nationwide Credit/ACB and VP of Operations for United Recovery Systems.

At 4:28pm on July 21, 2008, John McNamara said…: Absolutely. It's a tough business filled with some great people.

At 2:55pm on July 15, 2008, Molly Devine said…: Hey John,

I was disappointed I missed you as well. I hope next time you or Linda is in town you will let me know. It would be great to catch up. Let Linda know I said hi as well.