Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a collections clerk and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Collections Clerk is tasked with calling out the delinquent customers to collect overdue payments from credit card companies, public and private businesses and some independent contractors. This position requires firm yet polite clerks who keenly follow the company's pre-established guidelines and instructions all the time.
The principal roles of the post include researching, compiling, maintaining and managing data that is related to collection efforts, contacting customers to resolve billing issues, coordinating resolution of the past due accounts by arranging for payment, issuing debt commitment letters, monitoring cash on delivery or COD roll payments, contacting customers regarding overdue accounts, determining reasons for non-payment, satisfying collection activities to maximize cash receipts, negotiating the return of unpaid merchandise, issuing credit hold notifications, repossessing merchandise when payment is unlikely.
Core Skills Required to be a Collections Clerk
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A collections clerk should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Negotiation Skills:
Negotiation Skills are a deliberative process by which people settle their differences through an acceptable agreement to both parties to co-exist without argument and dispute in the workplace.
A Collections Clerk must learn to resolve any disputes that arise in the workplace using the principles of fairness, seeking mutual benefit and maintaining a cordial relationship that builds a success at the workplace.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
A Collections Clerk needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Critical Thinking:
Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.
A Collections Clerk will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.
Administrative Skills:
Administrative Skills are all the services related to the running of a business or keeping an office organized while supporting the efforts of the management team.
A Collections Clerk must develop these skills and emphasize the administrative skills to ensure high-level responsibilities that range from planning large scale events to creating presentations and analyzing financial data are handled carefully and efficiently.
Knowledge of Company Processes:
Knowledge of Company Processes is the in-depth understanding of a collection of related, structured activities that serve a particular goal for a group of customers or clients who are valuable to the enterprise.
A Collections Clerk ought to maintain consistency across the daily processed while keeping a keen eye on the overall plan of the organization by ensuring the company processes are performed and followed.
Dependability:
Dependability is the characteristic of being able to be counted on and relied upon by providing services that be trusted within a period.
A Collections Clerk needs to be dependable and hire reliable employees who can be counted on as consistent and beneficial to the business, building their niche as an essential element of the larger team without worrying about bringing less than your efforts.
Personal Growth:
Personal Growth is the improvement of one's awareness, identity, developing talents and potential to facilitate the growth of oneself and the position they handle at the workplace.
A Collections Clerk ought to assist his employees in finding themselves by introducing or referring them to methods, programs, tools, techniques and assessment systems that support their development at the individual level in the organization.
Adaptability:
Adaptability is the ability to cope with and adapt to unexpected situations in any environment and staying connected with a great attitude.
A Collections Clerk must shape the workplace with leadership skills that allow employees to adapt to the provided atmosphere and be able to give their best in the workplace while growing in their ability to become the best employees.
Customer Service:
Customer Service is the ability to cater for the needs of the client by providing excellent customer service without compromise.
A Collections Clerk must understand that pleasing customers is directly connected to the success of the business, therefore, must create a superior customer experience culture in the company that every employee should follow in ensuring all the customers are treated as they should.
Technology Savvy:
Technology Savvy is the introduction of the digital technology in the workplace as a strategy to make tasks run swiftly against doing them manually.
A Collections Clerk must ensure that the technology he introduces to the workplace integrated seamlessly with the workflow and empowers the users rather than complicates and damages the workflow making sure the employees are well prepared and not overwhelmed with the technology.
Hard Skills Required to be a Collections Clerk
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A collections clerk should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.