Collections Specialist Job Description, Skills, and Salary
Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a collections specialist. Feel free to use our job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a collections specialist.
Who is a Collections Specialist?
A Collections Specialist is someone who has expertise in handling over-due accounts and collecting money from debtors. They must ensure that their employer assets are protected and that they rightly confront individuals accountable for outstanding invoices.
Collections Specialists frequently work for independent corporations tasked with pursuing collections on behalf of numerous businesses. These specialists work in call centers, where they converse with customers over the phone while seated at a computer. Some work directly with companies trying to recover unpaid debts, so they maintain correct customer data in collaboration with other departments and generate financial reports for management.
Collections specialists play a critical role in their organizations and are instrumental in maintaining the bottom line of their businesses. Their core responsibility is dealing with customers and their accounts. Their main challenge is dealing with customers who might not have the money to pay their overdue debts, which might lead to awkward conversations. They must learn to start each interaction fresh and not bring baggage from past calls.
Collections Specialists must be good communicators with strong negotiating abilities, so they can handle tasks like setting up debt repayment, giving consumers advice or responding to their inquiries. They must be able to overcome challenges to succeed. In addition to working with other team members to identify ways to bring in payments and revenue, collections specialists should be able to manage crucial activities in a frequently hectic work environment. Communication is relevant in this position, so motivated applicants who enjoy working with others can identify solutions to problems and overcome obstacles.
Collections specialists operate in the accounting and billing divisions of a business to recover customers’ overdue payments. When payments are past due, a collections specialist looks into the accounts and gets in touch with the customers or suppliers to arrange a payment plan with accounts receivable. They use banks, a debt counselor, or an outside third-party collector to receive the company’s unpaid debt. A collections specialist may occasionally work with a bank loan or credit card to guarantee payment. They frequently deal with hostile or irate debtors, which can be unpleasant, so they must learn to handle verbal abuse while maintaining composure and professionalism.
Collections specialists can work in places like corporate offices, call centers, banks, credit agencies, and others. They work within a conventional time duration (9-5), though they may work evenings and weekends to reach debtors who are inaccessible during the day.
Collections Specialist Job Description
Below are the collections specialist job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a collections specialist job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.
- Watch over designated accounts to spot unpaid debts.
- Recognize accounts that have outstanding balances, and keep a record of the amount owed and the period of the lateness.
- Find the debtors and get in touch with them via phone or mail to remind them about their payments and enquire why they have not paid their debts.
- Ensure that account information is entered and kept correctly by checking records for accuracy and managing disputes.
- Create efficient repayment strategies by promoting timely payments and setting up payment arrangements that may help with good credit.
- Process customer payments, account changes, and refunds when necessary.
- Complete all administrative tasks necessary to maintain office effectiveness.
- Respond to client’s account inquiries in a timely and professional manner.
- Work with your team to develop strategies for generating income and achieving success together.
Qualifications
- High school diploma or equivalent.
- Tertiary institution degree (optional in some cases)
- Strong understanding of billing and collection processes.
- Possess in-depth knowledge of laws and policies related to debt collection.
- Have relevant skills for career progression.
Essential Skills
Here are some skills to succeed in this profession:
- Communication: Communication is the transfer of information orally, through writing, or other means. You should be courteous and display appropriate phone manners in all communications. Your interaction skill has to be great since you speak with debtors to persuade them to pay their dues, and often communicate with your colleagues to share information and make plans for getting debtors to pay their obligations. Learn to concentrate, communicate courteously, and delicately handle subjects that pertain to individual financial situations.
- Negotiation and Persuasive: The ability to persuade someone to come to terms with a suggestion is persuasion while discussing with a person to reach an agreement is known as negotiation. Sometimes, humans need some level of convincing to do things they already know about; they just need that extra push. It is hard to succeed as a collections specialist if you do not know how to persuade debtors and customers and negotiate payment schedules. You must know how to negotiate and reach agreements that are advantageous to both sides.
- Problem-solving: Collections specialists frequently assist clients to resolve their money-related issues, so they have to know how to solve problems as they come. One of the ways is to determine the cause of the delay in payments and come up with a plan that is okay for both parties. When a debtor does not have the funds to pay their debt, you might need to find a solution to a problem that arises during the process. This skill helps to find an ideal technique to handle clients and debtors to ensure collections’ success.
- Technologically inclined: Technology is vast as every career evolves, so you should have the necessary tech knowledge in your profession. As a collections specialist, you may have to learn how to use spreadsheet and word processing programs such as Google spreadsheet and doc, Microsoft Excel, and word. You must understand data collection, as you are to collate data and input it. You must use these programs to monitor clients and their debts and process data.
- Organization: You can identify as a great organizer when you use your time and strength to plan and carry out a task. Being disorganized is disadvantageous in this profession because you frequently handle vast amounts of data that you would not want to misplace or mix up due to disorganization. If you have the skill, it will help you efficiently sort and file data. You can apply this skill in creating file systems for incoming and outgoing mail and other papers.
- Detail-oriented: The ability for a person to observe and take note of the tiniest details makes that person detailed-oriented. A collections specialist must know how to pay attention to details, follow protocols and precisely record data. You will use this skill to execute your job responsibilities and ensure you adhere to the company’s requirements. Collections specialists deal with money, so they can not afford to miss important details such as data changes, debt owed, or changes in a client’s contact details. Collections professionals can use this ability to send the correct information to the right recipient.
- Critical thinking: This means when you logically analyze an issue and see how concepts relate to another autonomously and reflectively. A collections specialist ascertains whether an idea, argument and discovery represent a picture by examining and addressing existing or potential problems. They conclude from existing data.
- Administrative Skills: Having this skill entails that you can manage a company or keep an office orderly in support of the management team. A collections specialist must be an outstanding administrator to ensure that high-level responsibilities, such as preparing large-scale events, creating presentations, and analyzing financial data, are handled carefully and efficiently.
- Interpersonal Skill: Possessing interpersonal skills means that you can collaborate with others while avoiding interpersonal conflicts. A collections specialist needs to have this because it helps them be at peace with their colleagues, and the skill helps create a more hospitable and effective workplace. It also helps them when interacting with the debtors, as not having good interpersonal skills will put them off and make them more stubborn to pay off their debts.
- Creativity: The ability to perceive the world differently, spot hidden patterns, draw connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and come up with solutions are all examples of creativity. Creativity is the ability to turn original, imaginative ideas into reality. A collections specialist must be able to think, repeat, and act on ideas to bring consciousness to what was previously concealed and point to a new life that would advance the company to new heights.
- Orientation to Work: You must be work-oriented as it is a process of introducing a new employee to co-workers and providing the person with pertinent information such as timetables, performance expectations, benefits and facilities, supervisors’ names, etc. New hires must participate in an orientation procedure to acclimate to the job and learn.
- Passion for the job: Some people work where they do not like. They want to make money and have what keeps them busy from 9-5. As a collections specialist, you need to love your work rather than just the money you make. Loving what you do pushes you to give in your best, but when you are disconnected and hate your job, you will barely give the bare minimum and may cause a problem for yourself, your team members, and maybe the company.
- Goal-focused: If you set a goal and are focused on achieving it, you will work diligently to obtain exceptional results. To achieve this, you must be aware of the value of results, the competitive environment the business operates in, and the need for the personnel to remain focused on the results that every project invariably produces.
- Industry knowledge: To succeed in a career, you should know how the industry you belong to grows and changes as it makes you competitive. Update yourself with necessary industry knowledge that you can initiate or follow and how the acquired knowledge will ultimately benefit the company. Knowing would also give you an edge when you want to switch to a new company as they will see you as knowledgeable and skilled in the industry.
How to Become a Collections Specialist
Collections specialists are often entry-level professionals with minimal experience and education. However, prior work in this or a related field can increase your employability for collections specialist jobs. As you seek employment as a collections specialist, it is crucial to hone and highlight relevant skills.
Here are the steps often required for those pursuing this career path:
Complete your high school education. Some employers prefer to hire collections specialists with a minimum of a high school diploma. When applying to tertiary institutions, consider courses in communication, accounting, or business to provide you with knowledge and skills to prepare you for employment.
After graduating from college or the university, you can gather experience in a customer service role. Some employers look for collections specialists who have prior experience and have worked in a customer-facing position. It helps workers hone their customer service skills and become familiar with basic call center technology and customer service skills as they can use the experience and knowledge in their new profession.
Gain necessary skills to use Microsoft and google work apps such as MS word, excel, Google Docs, and spreadsheets, for documentation and data management in collections. You can learn these skills by taking self-paced online courses on udemy, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more, or taking physical classes where you would likely have a teacher you can ask questions when confused.
After you get these skills, build your resume. Make sure to highlight your skills with specific examples, then mention previous job responsibilities that required these skills and detail in a customer service or credit and finances role.
Seek local positions for collections specialists. As you search for jobs, you may find specialty areas such as legal collections specialist, healthcare collections specialist, or accounts receivable collections specialist. These job titles give you a clear idea of the accounts you will do. After getting the job, you may consider acquiring some certifications to further your career.
Where to Work as a Collections Specialist
- Call centers
- Banks
- Insurance companies
- Credit agencies
- Corporate companies
Collections Specialist Salary Scale
In the United States, a collections specialist can earn an annual average of $39,645. Their salary ranges between $28,760 and $62,600 or more.
Collections specialists in the United Kingdom make an annual average of £25,780. Their salaries range from £23,550 – £39,622.
