Bank collector's tears

 

Bank collector's tears

 

Agudengba and young Adong were discussing things like "the government owes the people debt but fails to repay it." At this time, Adong's wife Xiaofeng ran over.

A Dong told Agudengba that his wife Xiaofeng was a credit collector at the bank.

Xiaofeng told Agudengba about her job search experience:

As I was about to graduate the summer before last year, I looked for several jobs but failed to pass the interview. I was completely confused. What will you do after graduation? I have no idea. At this time, a friend of my parents recommended a job, still in a bank, and the position was "Asset Management Specialist". This is the first time I heard about this profession. Before the interview, I searched a lot of information on the Internet and learned that this position is simply to collect debts and make credit card users repay their overdue payments. The most impressive description I saw was "It's okay to make quick money, but don't try to make money in this profession for a lifetime, it will be very depressing." In addition, there were many crying accusations, such as "the debt collector ruined my family."

I entered a bank favored by my elders as a credit card collector. Without social experience, I was shocked by the absurd but real world on the other end of the phone. In a year when the epidemic is still ongoing and the industry has been undergoing frequent changes, I have faced slippage, deception, negativity, and anger. Through a cross-section of this profession, I have gained a deeper understanding of the world.

I didn’t want to do this career, but my parents said that banks were good, and there was still a chance to be transferred to another job, so I wanted to give it a try first, so I went.

I still remember the interviewer asked a question during the interview: This position has a lot of performance pressure. Have you considered taking an administrative position? I was secretly happy and said, "Respect the company's arrangement." But the interviewer immediately told me that this position requires a "firm" and "strong" person, and I was not the person he wanted.

"What our industry needs is social experience. Facing so many customers across the country, we need different methods to collect debts from different people. Let me give you an example. If the cardholder is a male, in some southern regions, there are usually Elder sister or younger sister. In this case, you can put pressure on his older sister or younger sister. If they don’t help repay the debt, the cardholder’s parents will force the sister to help the male cardholder repay the debt. This is the characteristic of the region." He said.

Xiaofeng continued to Agudengba:

I was very shocked after hearing this. If I didn't work in this profession, I wouldn't believe that such a thing would happen. It's a bit unscrupulous. But I thought about the people I interacted with in that place, and it seemed like that was indeed the case.

In the end, I was admitted. In the training before joining the company, there were many similar collection techniques. During that time, I listened to various call recordings every day, teaching us how to break through the psychological defenses of customers and get them to pay back the money. In addition, it is repeatedly emphasized: try not to sympathize with customers.

At that time, I liked to listen to classes with complaint cases. There would be recordings of phone calls in the class. Customers would irritate the collector by saying all kinds of dirty words, and the collector couldn't stand it and would scold him back. It was funny and refreshing. However, according to regulations, collectors cannot speak harsh words to cardholders. As long as they use foul language and curse, the collector may be complained, and the price of the complaint is said to be disqualification from promotion and selection.

After the training, I officially started working. The office is a bank building, which looks magnificent. Our department occupies several floors of the bank, with about a hundred people sitting on one floor. I still remember the first time I walked in. My colleagues were talking and yelling into the phone. It was very noisy. One minute a colleague was warning the person on the other end of the phone, "Keep your mouth clean!", and the next minute they started a friendly exchange, "Brother, if you had spoken like this earlier, we would have solved the matter."

Like any other job, our competition is fierce. The basic job is to sit in your seat and make a fixed number of dozens of phone calls every day, and you must get through before the number can be counted. If you can't get through, you will keep calling. Therefore, "return visits" are a matter of course for us, and 100% is never enough. , the workload must exceed 100% to have an advantage. Our performance will be ranked every day, and there will be a payment collection task every month. Those who receive more payment will get more commissions. You can't make much money just by making phone calls.

Xiaofeng continued:

In fact, when I first started working, I felt more of novelty. I'm a little afraid of communicating with customers. Every phone call is like opening a blind box. The answer rate for debt collection calls is actually very low. It is normal for 20-30 phone calls to be answered once, but I feel very nervous before every call. I have no idea what kind of person is on the other side. There was no way to predict what I would face.

what can I do?

Frankly speaking, I lack general knowledge and don’t care about the macro employment situation, industry conditions, or economic conditions. I have never made money, and I don’t know how difficult it is to make money. But this job really gave me an idea of these things.

These clients of mine are basically all "miserable". Whether they have created a miserable persona or they are really miserable, but judging from their descriptions, it is a complete mess. Being overwhelmed by the epidemic is what most overdue customers have in common. When asked why they owe money, all customers will immediately say "it's because of the epidemic": the store was open and then suddenly couldn't open, but the work was good. suddenly disappeared, followed by a steady stream of unfinished debts.

The people I have urged the most are people in the catering industry, and the ones who have suffered the most are those in the catering industry. There are just too many. I remember a middle-aged customer who owed us more than 20,000 yuan, which was not a big sum. I called to ask, and he told me that he was a restaurant owner before the epidemic, but the restaurant closed down not long after the epidemic. His creditors include multiple banks, and his total debt is very high. Because the debt was too high, his wife divorced him. During this period, his father broke his leg and had heart disease and high blood pressure and needed to be hospitalized. His brother had necrosis of the femoral head and needed to live on subsistence allowances. He borrowed money to take his children to rent a house outside, and now he has found a job as a cook, earning 3,000-4,000 yuan a month, and the rent is 1,500 yuan.

He couldn't handle this matter as soon as he heard about it. He still cashed out every month to pay off his debts, borrowing from this person and paying back that person. This happens every month. If one of them reduces their quota, the others will not be able to pay it back. In this situation, I can only tell him in very official terms, "I personally understand your situation very well, but the money you owe must always be paid back." He is in such a miserable state that I can only talk to him about solutions, but I know that he can probably handle it for one or two hundred yuan, but it is already difficult for him to handle more than 1,000 yuan.

Agudengba did not interrupt Xiaofeng's words, but still listened carefully to her continued words:

This is a very extreme situation. The family is prone to many disasters and the business is in ruins. I still remember a similar restaurant owner who also had a total debt of 500,000 to 600,000 yuan. After the restaurant closed down, he went to Meituan to take out food and earned 4,000 to 5,000 yuan a month. This is a very normal case of failure in the catering business.

In addition to catering, those who are most overdue are people on construction sites, including migrant workers and people engaged in engineering projects. Migrant workers owe relatively little, but project clients owe a lot, ranging from RMB 80,000 to RMB 100,000. Recently, an engineering client subcontracted labor services to a company. He borrowed the money for workers' wages and labor materials from the bank, but the company still hasn't paid the final payment, which is more than 1 million yuan. Of course, if the payment is settled, we can easily pay off our debt, but this kind of thing is unreliable. No one knows whether or when the payment will be settled.

There are all kinds of overdue people, many of whom have low academic qualifications, do manual labor, and have little legal awareness. I met a sister who was born in 1999. She is from the southwest region. She has not studied since she graduated from junior high school. She looks very small in the photo. She does not owe much money, only a few thousand yuan. But if you tell her about suing, she will tell me confidently, "Even if I go to court, the judge will consider it as appropriate."

When I first entered the industry, I often felt uncomfortable. When I heard the casual words from the person on the phone, my heart would tremble violently. I knew that they were people who owed money and would not pay back. They would be very irritable when they were pressed for collection, but in reality, this may not be the case. Is a bad person.

There is a customer who works as a garment factory in Guangdong. He came to Guangdong to start his business when the traditional manufacturing industry was at its most developed. The village where he was located was full of garment factories. When I called him for the first time, I explained his billing situation in normal terms, and then told him that we would go through the legal process. He listened to me quietly, and then told me in a very low tone, Xia Tian At that time, the factory was no longer viable and closed down. In addition to having no income, he also had to treat his father, who had been suffering from cancer for 10 years.

"This morning the doctor asked me to take him back to his hometown to recuperate." He paused and then said, "The doctor asked my dad to wait for death." I didn't know what to say, so I read a few lines into the "script book" and hung up. Two days later, I called him again and asked him where he was. He said that he had returned to his hometown and that his father passed away today. I can't say anything anymore. what can I do? I had to hang up the phone again.

One customer was even more negative than the one who owned a clothing factory. The uncle is in his fifties, has no wife or children, and opened an education and training institution. It closed down not long ago. He owes us a debt of 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, and also owes a total of 20,000 to 300,000 yuan to other banks. Including the mortgage, it was completely overdue. When I asked him questions, he basically ignored me. He knew that it was not enough, so he stopped struggling. "No matter how bad it is, it can't be any worse. I've heard other banks say it even worse."

When I first started working, I was under a lot of pressure and wanted to cry every day. Collection collectors deal with some slippery people and some arrogant people who feel they are justified even though they owe money. I remember a customer said to me, "If you give me this money, don't you just use it for me? Do you have to pay it back after using it?" I really can't help but want to quarrel when I meet a scoundrel, but some people just can't pay it back. He had money, so he would ask me: "I'll steal this money and grab it for you, okay?"

655, I still remember this number. A very busy woman owed 655 yuan and refused to pay it back for more than 40 days. When I called her, she told me impatiently: "I'm very busy! I have a meeting! Stop rushing me!" There was another one. After her business in the Northeast Bathing House failed, she owed more than 3,000 yuan and has not paid it back. She worked part-time at the Cainiao Station run by her father. When I called her, she gave the phone to her father. Her father said, "I Don’t know her”.

There are many people who threaten to die. When they are in debt, it is easy for cardholders to say things like "It's so difficult, I want to jump off the building", "I'm driving now, I'll just hit my head and die", which are like mantras. Same, I would be very scared at first, what if something really happened? To this day, I will try my best to persuade with some words. If it is a man, I will say to him, "Sir, life is precious!" If it is a woman, I will say to her, "Madam, you still have children. Think of him!"

Many things are fragmented, incomplete, and very short-lived. One phone call lasts three minutes. When all the phone calls are put together, it feels like everyone is suffering. At the beginning, I would sigh, how could this person be so miserable? Later, I would find out that 5 out of 5 people were so miserable. This person told a story about his bankruptcy, unemployment, and separation of his wife and children, and the next person would tell the story. A similar story. But the stories were useless. At first I would listen, but later I would interrupt them and say, "But that's not a reason to be overdue."

I noticed that my own mentality was slowly changing. Every time I finished a call, I would slam the mouse or sigh outside the phone. Whose life is easy?

Xiaofeng narrated her career experience almost with oral reference:

It’s not the best time for me to enter the industry. The career of a debt collector has its twists and turns. First of all, the implementation of the Personal Information Law in November last year dealt a huge blow to the industry. When a cardholder applies for a credit card, they will leave the contact information of their immediate family members. In the past, we would contact the family members and ask them to help the cardholder find a solution. But now we can no longer call the third party, which undoubtedly makes it difficult to get the money back.

What's more important is that the general environment has deteriorated. A colleague with longer experience told me that before the epidemic, from the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020, the money back was extremely fast. Everyone had some savings in their hands, and they repaid their customers as soon as they called on them. That was when the debt collection industry was booming, and no one expected that it would be so bad later. At that time, collectors could earn a stable salary of more than 10,000 yuan a month, but now most people can only earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan, and the difference may only be 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.

The turnover of personnel here is also very fast. 80% of the employees who came with me have left. Some have gone to other banks, and some are preparing for the civil service examination. The performance pressure is too great. The target of hundreds of thousands of repayments every month is only met very rarely. Since it is difficult to recover the money, everyone can only keep working overtime and making phone calls, hoping to increase the probability of making more money.

Xiaofeng sighed to Agudengba:

In a sense, debt is the most secret part of a person. Even a seemingly prosperous person may be carrying huge debts. Even if the debtor keeps the debt secret, eventually the debt collector cannot hide it. The full name of debt collector is "Asset Management Specialist". As an important position in financial institutions such as banks, he is responsible for collecting overdue debts. Behind the overdue debt is the entanglement between the collector and the cardholder. The brief exchange of phone calls sometimes revealed a series of arguments and foul language, and sometimes it was a glimpse of a person holding a credit card and slipping it into an empty pocket. Life.

I think this industry is already a sunset industry. Regulations are getting stricter and stricter, and it can gradually be replaced by AI. Perhaps more debts will be recovered through litigation in the future. Coupled with the high performance pressure, I will choose to transfer positions or change careers if there is a suitable opportunity. After all, it is a profession. There is no need to sympathize or feel sad. We are all ordinary people and have their own difficulties. It’s just that sometimes when I’m walking on the street and I see some middle-aged people, I wonder, will this person talk like my client on the phone?

Some time ago, I pressed a female client. She told me that her husband was in jail, she was raising her children, and she was trying to make money to pay off her debts. She choked up in the middle of her words. I could only comfort her and say, "I hope you can be more optimistic," but before hanging up the phone, I added, "Work hard to make money and pay off your debts."

If I have to say what this profession has brought me, it is that it taught me that leaving this profession is not a noble profession. Every day’s work is to collect overdue debts from the victims with tears in my heart. debt.Xiaofeng started choking and sang a "Debt Collection Song":

 

I have a strange job

Call on overdue debts

My task is to collect debts every day

My heart is filled with tears

 

I can't sympathize with the victims

I can't work hard to complete the business

I ask others to repay debts against my will

What’s sad is that others still have me

 

I don't know where happiness is

All I know is that if I don’t have money, I will die.

I cursed that if I don’t repay my debt, I’m a bad guy.

The old man called me a debt collector