Maintaining norms about expressed emotions: the case of bill collectors

Administrative Science Quarterly, June, 1991 by Robert I. Sutton

METHODS

The Research Site

I conducted this study at a collection facility that specialized in obtaining overdue credit-card payments. Typically, payments on one-sixth to one-third of the millions of credit cards the parent corporation issued were 30 or more days overdue. The facility made collections by telephone and wrote letters only to debtors who could not be reached by phone. Collectors made calls every three days to debtors they were unable to reach and every seven days to debtors they had reached in the prior call, the maximum allowed by law. The facility made about 800,000 calls, and collectors spoke with about 200,000 debtors each month. About 200 of the 350 employees were bill collectors. Collectors were paid salaries and could earn incentive pay and prizes (e.g., a VCR or $100 cash) from contests, but such incentives rarely composed more than 10 percent of their pay. There was much differentiation and specialization among collectors, whom the facility grouped primarily by stages of debtor delinquency, known as "buckets": bucket two = 35 to 64 days delinquent; bucket three = 65 to 94 days delinquent; bucket four = 95 to 124 days delinquent; bucket five = 125 to 154 days delinquent; and bucket six = 155 to 184 days delinquent. Collectors in earlier buckets were younger, less experienced, and less well-paid and often did not view collecting as a career. Collectors in later buckets were older, more experienced, and better paid and thought of debt collection as a career. Other groups of collectors included those who dealt with debtors who held multiple charge cards and with "recovery," where payments were sought from the most recalcitrant debtors who, after day 185 of delinquency, had their loans written off as corporate losses. Other groups handled skiptracing (finding debtors who had "disappeared"), computer support, training, and legal work. Conversations between collectors and debtors were similar across buckets, although the complexity and intensity increased in later buckets. Typically, a collector began by using a friendly, informal style to disguise the purpose of the call (e.g., "Hi, is Andy around? This is Janet."). If the debtor answered the phone, the collector introduced him- or herself ("Hi, this is Bill calling from your bank."), asked about the late payment ("According to our records, your account is $800 past due."), and pressed for a promise to pay a specific amount by a specific day. Collectors had instant access to eight "screens," or computerized pages of information, about each debtor. These screens had hundreds of bits of information, including account status (open or closed and why), amount owed, payment history, notes summarizing each past call about the account, how long the person had held the card, total lifetime charges, and payment histories for other cards the debtor held. Collectors in buckets two and three and about half those in bucket four had machine-paced jobs. An automatic dialing system presented them with a stream of debtors (or answering machines) to speak with, in concert with screens summarizing each account. In contrast, collectors in later buckets chose the order in which to call their portfolio of debtors. Bucket-two collectors were expected to speak with about 15 debtors an hour. Fewer "connects" were expected in later buckets because calls were dialed manually, debtors were more difficult to find, and conversations were longer. For example, bucket-five collectors were expected to make about 35 "connects" a day. Collectors had much success in convincing debtors to pay. Data from a one-month period showed that they had obtained substantial payments from about 60 percent of debtors in bucket two (35 to 64 days late) and from 25 percent of the few recalcitrant debtors (about 1 percent) who, despite the prior efforts of collectors in buckets two through five, reached bucket six (155 to 184 days late).