Playing to a Collector’s Strengths

Capitalizing on a collector’s strengths is one goal of the newer debt collection arm CKS Financial, LLC, which web services provider CDYNE Corp. launched.

I spoke with John Sanders, CKS Financial’s director of operations, and Christopher Chenoweth, chief information officer of CDYNE, today to get a better sense of the company's initiatives.

To help know what collector works what account best, the accounts are scored. CKS Financial will take demographical information about the debtor, for example, and profile what type of debtor the collector is good at collecting from. If the collector is successful with that account type, it will be prioritized. Many factors go into these scoring models, ranging from how fast a collector collects to the economy's turbulence by accounting for demographic information like a state's unemployment rate.

CKS Financial and CYDNE will bring XML web services to the collections niche. A couple of interesting tech elements include:

--CKS Financial will boast a couple of modes on its collection platform, so when a collector first starts working at an agency, he or she will be in more of a “wizard-like” mode that aims to eliminate human error. This mode prevents “skipping steps” in the collection process, according to the execs.

--The computer screen will display collectors' collection goals at the top.

--CKS Financial will call debtors using local area codes.