Client Contact

Collect! enables you to schedule contacts for your Clients in the same manner that is used in the Debtor area of the software. It is possible for your Admin/CSRs/inside sales teams to have their own WIP lists comprised of Client Contacts to be managed in the same manner that collectors work their designated account responsibilities.

From a Client perspective, sending out email blasts, reminders for new placement batches, invites to corporate functions, news letters, schedule a Clients monthly reports on a repeating schedule such as Client Status Reports. There are no limitations. Whatever you can do with respect to Debtor accounts can be accomplished with Clients.

Your Sales Team can even use it for personal touches with your Clients like keeping track of birthdays, anniversaries or other important milestone dates that they may wish to acknowledge as part of their Client servicing.

The Client Contact screen is used to define contacts and other actions scheduled to occur on specific dates. Several different types of contacts may be scheduled. The Client Contact screen displays Fields and pick lists for all the possible settings that you can choose from.

Client Contact Screen

When you are working your WIP list, Client Contacts will be displayed along with any other current Debtor Contacts. When you select a Client Contact, you will be taken to the Client screen. The current contact will be highlighted in the list of Client Contacts.

Accessing Client Contact

To access the Client Contact screen, select the Contact tab when you are viewing the Client window. If you do not see this Tab on your Client window, contact us to discuss your upgrade options. The following are the Fields associated with the Client Contact screen.

Type

The Type field sets the type of contact that you are scheduling. Press F2 or click the drop down arrow to view the list of contact types that you can choose from.

The Type of contact determines a general action. For instance, Letter means print a letter, while Review means schedule a Review on the account. Other settings on the Contact screen define the details, such as which letter to print, or an free-hand user entered Description for the Review to serve as a reminder to yourself as to what you wish to accomplish when this contact reaches its due date.

The use of the Description field changes depending on the Type you select in the Type field.

Types Of Contacts

When you choose a Contact Type, other Fields on the Contact screen change according to the Type you select. The following is a list of predefined Contact Types with details of how your choice of Type affects the Contact screen and the way the system handles the contact.

Commission

The Commission Contact sets a commission rate in the Advanced Client Settings. This rate applies on a go forward basis for all new accounts entered for this Client. In the Description field, enter the percentage as a number. For example, 33 means 33% and 12.5 means 12.5%.

Letter

The Letter Contact schedules a letter to be queued for printing in your daily batch. Press F2 or click the drop-down arrow on the Description field to view the list of all letters and reports in your system. Select the letter to be printed.

When your daily letter batch runs, the batch process uses the Description field of each Letter contact to locate the letter to print. Please be aware that changing the name of a letter may result in Collect! not being able to process a Letter contact when the batch is run.

When you print a Client or Debtor letter, the batch process will attach a Metafile to the Letter Contact.

Client Contact with Metafile

If the Client Settings have disabled metafiles, then the system will not save the metafile.

Note

The Note Contact writes one line into the Client Note Tab. In the Description field, enter the text you want written into the Client's notes.

If an asterisk [*] is the first character in the Description, an asterisk will be placed at the beginning of the noteline causing it to be held at the top of the Notes as an Important noteline.

Operator

The Operator Contact sets the operator in the Client Settings field labeled 'Assign operator ID to accounts'. This Operator ID will be assigned to all new accounts entered for this Client on a go forward basis. The Collector field holds the Operator ID to be set in the Client Settings when this Operator contact is processed.

Other

For general use, write a note in the Description field.

Phone

The Phone Contact schedules a phone call to the Client. A drop-down arrow appears in the Description field allowing you to choose from available phone locations for this Client. When you choose Dial A Number from the Tools Menu, Collect! reads the Phone contact's Description field and the phone number is displayed automatically.

If you have the Auto Dialer option configured and functioning on your site, this phone number will be dialed automatically when you enter this Contact when working your WIP.

Plan

The Plan Event type is a contact plan that will call another contact plan. Complex strategies often require nested plans using conditional logic with the 'Schedule if' fields. Press F2 or click the drop-down arrow at the end of the Description field to choose which ID from your Contact Plan menu to run.

Rate Plan

The Rate Plan Contact sets a Commission Rate Plan in the Client Settings. This rate plan applies on a go forward basis for all new accounts entered for this Client. Press F2 or click the drop-down arrow at the end of the Description field to choose a commission Rate Plan ID from your existing list of Rate Plans.

Review

The Review Contact schedules a review of the account or client. Enter a free-form Description which will appear with this contact in the Operator's WIP list.

Sales

The Sales Contact sets the operator in the Client Settings field labeled 'Assign sales ID to new accounts'. This operator ID will be assigned as the Sales ID for any new accounts entered for this Client on a go forward basis. The "Collector" field in the Contact event should be selected with which Sales ID you wish to have to be set in the Client Settings when this Sales contact is processed. The Sales Contact changes the Sales Team ID assigned to new Debtors entered in your system. Select the Sales ID from the pick list in the Collector field.

Client

This is the Client whose account is being worked. You may want to send a letter to this Client, make a phone call, write a note or several other actions.

Due Date

This is the scheduled date for the contact activity. The Due Date determines when this contact shows up in an operator's WIP List. For batch processing, the Due Date is the date that the contact will be processed.

Time

This is the scheduled Time for the contact activity in 24 hour format. Meaning, if you input 4, then this is 4 AM. Input 16 for 4 PM, 18 for 6 PM and so on. You can set the time
to the minute. For example, you could enter 16:25 and the call will pop up at 4:25 PM.

It is not compulsory to enter a time. Timed contacts are important when you must deal with a Client at a specific time. Then you would enter 19:00 in the time field of the contact and it will popup on your screen at that time.

If you do not need a time prompt for this account, it is recommended that you leave the time field blank.

Repeat

The Repeat field allows you to automatically forward the date of a contact. This function is activated when you batch process your automatic contacts.

Press F2 or click the drop-down arrow beside this field to select a repeat cycle. When a repeat period is selected, other Fields become visible.

When this field is set to Custom, the Number of Days field becomes visible.

Max Intervals

This field is visible when you select a Repeat value. The system uses it to determine how many times this Contact is to be done over.

Priority

The Priority field allows you to enter a user defined numeric value that can be used to indicidate different orders of operation or other significance in your office. Because one can segment High/Low or sort Ascending/ Descending, this is an aid that will be used by the WIP list when selecting accounts to feed an Operator when they are using the >> arrow keys to advance to their next Contact.

Priority levels in the WIP list are as follows.

66 to 99 - High

34 to 65 - Medium

1 to 33 - Low

Class

The Class field is for your own use. You can use it to further categorize a particular type of contact. So used, you would have another variable that could be utilized in a custom report to drill down to custom/specific data in selecting or excluding accounts in a report.

Amount

The Amount field is used to store a dollar amount. You can use it for any purpose. However, for certain types of contacts, it has a special purpose.

Number Of Days

The Number of Days field holds the user defined number of days the Contact due date is to be forwarded when the Contact is processed.

This field is only displayed when the Repeat field is set to "Custom."

Description

The Description field either a pick list selected or user defined free-hand text that defines the purpose/details of what is to be accomplished with the Contact event.

Example: you may have the Description set to " New Business" on your Review contacts imbedded when you enter new listings into the system so that your collectors see this and recognize the priority. Contact types such as Phone require that you select which type of phone (home/poe etc.) is intended for calling. It is not necessary to enter multiple Phone contact events if you want your Operators to call every number if the debtor has been reached.

Each site can individualize how they wish their staff to use the Description fields.

Attachment

The Attachment field is typically used to store documents or other file types that are related to a particular contact event; i.e. a WAV file from a Dialer Campaign or a recorded complaint call saved with the Phone Contact it pertains to. This is not a mandatory field and is most often left blank.

To the right of this field, there are four icons.

The Folder icon is to Open or create an Attachment.

The Printer icon is used to Print an existing attachment's contents.

The Trash bin icon is used to delete the existing Attachment.

The Magnifying glass icon is used to navigate to where the file or document is stored so that it may be saved as an Attachment with this contact event.

Defaults

Select the 'Defaults' button to open the WIP Options screen where you can modify the settings for the default behavior of your Work In Progress.

Collector

This is the Operator ID assigned to this Contact event: whose WIP list this contact will appear in. For a Client contact event that is meant to be worked by inside sales, the ID to select in this field is that of the sales person who is to action the Client Contact event so that it will appear in their WIP. If it is a clerical task that you want another employee to action, then their user ID would go into the Collector ID field in the contact event.

Assigned By

This is the operator who sent you the contact. This would ordinarily be the same as the Originator. However, when the contact has been forwarded, this could be a different operator.

Originator

This is the operator who created the contact.

Done By

This is the operator who completed the contact. This field is visible only when a contact is marked "Completed."

Created Date

This is the date the contact was created.

Created Time

This is the time the contact was created.

Done Date

This is the date the contact was done. This field is only visible when a contact is marked "Completed."

Done Time

This is the time the contact was done. This field is only visible when a contact is marked "Completed."

In Progress

A mark in the radio button beside this field means that the contact has not been done. The contact will be loaded into your WIP list until the contact is marked completed.

Completed

A mark in the radio button beside this field means that the contact has been completed. The contact will no longer show up in the WIP list of the party who completed the single event unless there is another In Progress event type that will appear in someone's WIP on a future date.

See WIP List topics for more details.

Do Not Autodelete

Switch this ON to prevent autodeletion of this contact. This is useful for overriding events in contact plans that delete pending contacts.

No Autocomplete

In WIP Options, the setting 'Automatically mark contacts done' can be set so that Contacts are marked as Done when they are worked from the WIP List. To override this global setting for this particular contact, switch ON 'No Autocomplete'.

Elapsed

This is the amount of time that you have spent on the contact. You can enter an amount in hh:mm:ss time format (for example, 00:01:53 is 1 minute and 53 seconds.) Or, you can set a WIP Options preference to "Enable elapsed time counter" to enter a value for you automatically.

Time tracking is recorded only when contacts are worked from the WIP List and are displayed cumulatively. Total time spent will reflect repeated visits via the same contact. It is not presently tracked how many times the Operator came back to this contact event throughout the day.

Delete

This button is visible only on a list of contacts. Select it to delete the highlighted contact from the database.

Edit

This button is visible only on a list of contacts. Select it to open and edit the highlighted contact.

New

Select this button to save any changes you may have made to current contact and then create a new blank contact for you to set your next work date.

Help

Select this button for help on the Client Contact screen and links to related topics.

Cancel

Select this button to ignore any changes you may have made to this contact and return to the previous screen.

OK

Select this button to save any changes you have made to this contact and return to the previous screen.

<<

Select this button to view the previous contact in the list.

>>

Select this button to view the next contact in the list.

Contact Attachment Field

As described above, to the right of the Attachment field there are four icons: Open/Create is a Folder icon, Print is a Printer icon, Delete is a Trash bin icon and Search/Select is a Magnifying glass icon.

Open Or Create An Attachment

To create an attachment, click the Folder icon and a Windows file explorer popup will appear. Navigate to where your document or file is stored on your PC or Network and select the filename to be attached. Once selected, click the Open button to save. You will be prompted if you wish to save the file to the "global" path. Unless your inhouse Systems Administrator has indicated otherwise, the response to this prompt is Yes.

If you are clicking on the Folder icon and a file is already saved as an Attachment, it will open the file or document with the configured application reader on your system that is associated for that file type.

Print An Attachment

If there is a filename displayed in the attachment field, you can click the Print icon to print the filename's contents. If applicable, select the printer from your list of configured printers that you wish to direct the print job to be completed on.

Delete An Attachment

If there is a filename displayed in the Attachment field, you can click on the Trash bin icon (or "X" icon for versions CV12 and higher) to delete the attachment.

Attach Existing File

To attach an existing file to this contact, click the Magnifying Glass icon. This feature allows you attach any kind of file to your accounts without opening it. As long as Windows is set up to handle that file type, you can instantly display or print any type of original information about any account.

You can print Contact attachments in reports and letters using the @File command in your report templates. However, the attachment file can ONLY be a text file.

If you put a URL in this field, the system will use your web browser to go to the website when you select the Open icon.

Importing Client Contacts

As of version CV11.4.3, you can import and export Client Notes, Client Attachments, Client Contacts and Payments. This requires that you are licensed for Collect!'s optional Import/Export module.

Sample import maps are shipped with Collect! and are available for download from the Member Center on our website.

See Also

- Client Topics
- Batch Processing