Chapter 10: Maximizing Debt Collection Performance Through Organizational Design Changes

From the Book: The Refractive Thinker®: Vol IV: Ethics, Leadership, and Globalization

Summary

The global financial crisis in 2008 underlined the need to achieve superior debt collection performance levels in contact centers of financial institutions worldwide. Controversy exists over the appropriate job design in contact centers to maximize performance. Kroll’s quantitative, quasi-experimental study determined significant differences in job design of the Scientific Production Line Model (SPLM) and the Alignment High Involvement Model (AHIM) on debt collection performance of 60 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) at a contact center of a major financial services company in Mexico. The first hypothesis, examined the impact of job design on CSR productivity, indicating that job design significantly influences collector productivity. The second hypothesis showed an insignificant impact of job design on CSR effectiveness. The unique contribution of Kroll’s study was a collection model that applied the SPLM job design to enhance collection productivity and effectiveness.