Whilst we successfully support a large number of clients who trade overseas we are constantly reminded of how important cultural understanding is when it comes to successful debt recovery. It's not just about language, though clearly without it you are unlikely to make any progress at all in getting paid - in France for example, attempts to collect debt in English will generally result in the call being ended abruptly.
To illustrate the point about cultural awareness, we recently signed up a client with significant debt collection needs in Russia. Russia is a distinct cultural environment when it comes to business and debt collection - a fact which the following case study explicitly highlights.
One particular debt placed was for £25k. The debtor was an established company in Moscow and the contact was a Mr. Fydorov (the names have been changed):
- Our first contact attempt was met with a stonewall - not unusual
- The second attempt was slightly more successful in that we were informed that Mr. Fydorov was on a special project for 5 months and was not contactable
- Undeterred, our third attempt resulted in a conversation with Mr. Fydorov's deputy
- The fourth attempt still didn't result in speaking with Mr. Fydorov but we started to build a relationship with his deputy
- The fifth contact received a sympathetic response from the deputy, and an outline of a way forward
- After further correspondence exchange the debtor sent a letter offering settlement close to the value of the original debt
There are three main points to take away from this if you want to collect international debt successfully:
- Persistence is key
- You have to speak the language
- You absolutely have to understand the culture
In the above example we used a Russian national on the team, based in our main office in Warrington, and they fully understand the subtle nuances that would generally pass even a fluent Russian speaker by if they were not a Russian national. It also helps to be able to manage the process from within your home country too - the cultural differences work at both ends of the process and often UK companies can become frustrated by dealing with the cultures of debt collection partners based in a particular country.
For more information on our Russian debt recovery services please visit http://www.octempo.com/Debt-collection-recovery-russia.aspx