John Pratt writes a monthly skip tracing article for Collection Advisor Magazine.

Test, Test, Test, Test...

by John Pratt

For those of us who skiptrace using pay sites such as Accurint, CBCInnovis, Interactive Data or a skiptracing tool from Equifax, Trans Union or Experian we are often given an opportunity to test a product we are not currently using.

We may do an online test or a batch test or both. Oh Boy! A free test is always good.

Everyone likes a free test but few take the best approach to it.

From our view point we think that few people in our industry know how to optimize their skiptracing. Skiptracing is not understood. The results are not understood or tracked.

Everyone skiptraces but few know how, or if, it leads to collecting the debt.

In every situation we have gone into as consultants we find a breakdown in the skiptracing process. Perhaps too much is being spent on skiptracing or too little.

Few people can tell me the results of skiptracing. We have seen that in some placements or portfolios forty percent of the recovery can come from skiptracing and in other placements we see ten percent of recovery comes from skiptracing.

How much of your recovery comes from skiptracing? How many of your accounts by placement or portfolio are skips?

How much are you spending on skiptracing when you factor the cost and the time spent to work the skip files or the skip leads?

Back to the free stuff. What are we searching for? In this article I will say we are searching for a telephone number that can get us in contact with the debtor.

One vendor may get us a phone number for eighty percent of the accounts and another may get phone numbers for thirty five percent of the accounts. Which is better? If I get no contacts from the first vendor and five contacts from the second vendor then the second vendor will be better. But, how much money did I recover? This leads to setting up a test that actually answers some questions.

We try to test using a set number of accounts with follow up at certain points in a timeline. For instance, what are the initial results? What are the results at thirty and sixty days?

When offering a test the vendors should suggest a controlled test. There should be clear knowledge of what the cost would be if the test was not free.

There should be some understanding of what the test is trying to achieve.

If your staff pulls skiptracing reports manually then any free test should be manual. It’s ok to also do a batch test but if you do not normally batch then it’s hard to get a comparison.

If you always batch then the test should be a batch test.

Again, what would the price be if the test was not free. Compare that against what is being currently being paid for skiptracing.

In a perfect world the vendors would make sure all of their sales people knew something about skiptracing and what your company actually needs. Don’t get me wrong some of the sales people are up on their stuff, but many are not.

In a perfect world the companies using skiptracing products would actually understand skiptracing. It’s not a perfect world.

Everything in this industry is about money collected from debtors and the cost to do it.

We feel testing new products is good. Even if you tested another vendor in the last year it is good to retest. We see positive and negative movement in all skiptracing products. A controlled test can give you a lot of information and the vendors representatives speak to a lot of folks in the industry and can be a wealth of information concerning trends that are out there.

We recommend that a set number of accounts are selected for the test. These are run through your normal process and then tested with a new vendor. This test should note the difference in cost and have an understanding where each vendor returned the same results. Where we see the vendors returning different phone numbers on the same account the test can be skewed if one number is called and contact is made but then the phone number from the other vendor is not phoned but could have led to contact also.

Understanding the skiptrace process is very important. Testing products can only help.

Anyone can be found if you have all the time and money in the world. Unfortunately we only have a buck.

I appreciate all the feedback I receive. Thank you.

Interested in contacting john about the article?

Feel free to write John and send your questions or comments to the email below.

Thank you.

john.pratt@pmg-solution.com