I guess in most cases that would make me thick headed, stupid or just dumb. I was explaining this to my partner Marty about all the initial frustrations CTI has in opening collection call centers overseas and opening a school and office in India and running everything from 10,000 miles away along with our partner Sandeep Bhatnagar on site in India.

India originally was like working with Murphy and his law. Everything that possibly could go wrong would and did and it was all a learning curve for the new employees at CTI all the way up to the most veteran of us. I now understand why no one else is doing this or even attempting to do this in India and the Philippines.

It started off with electricity connections and connectivity in India a dozen times a day. Then we rented a generator, which in India is as important as a refrigerator for food. It then became finding the right call center, which meant finding the right employees for that call center. There were times you hired a good collection manager, but his collectors that followed, followed him and not the owner of the center. As you know this became a problem. We even had a call center personnel drop dead right on the collection floor, needless to say, this also held things up.

You see collection call centers in India are a bit different from the United States as they work that second overnight shift and call sixteen hours a day from 8 am eastern standard time to 9 pm pacific standard time. The call center owners provide taxi service for all overnight employees and also provide a cooked meal and snack for all the employees.

Our strategic vendor partners have all gone way out of their way to provide us with all kinds of services and support during the ramp up period and we are eternally thankful to them, but teaching the overseas centers about their product and services via web training, getting them integrated with our software program CSS Impact and then jump starting the process with all of its arms and legs have not gone without issues, most of them on the call center end. Again I thank all of our strategic vendor partners for going that extra yard, during this learning curve period for all of us. You see this is the first time that U.S. companies have tried to teach India and Philippine call centers about all of the collection tools, products and services that are available to the U.S. credit and collections industry. Many of these products and services are still barred from being used overseas in their entirety due to a little thing called the Patriot Act. CTI is working with all of its strategic vendor partners to get as many of these products and services for authorized usage in the India and Philippine call center communities, but again a very difficult task considering the laws that govern these products and their usage.

The reason CTI is an industry leader in India and the Philippines is because we have made all of the mistakes in the past many years in the overseas call center communities. We know what to do and of course most importantly what NOT to do. Our active call centers overseas are now doing a wonderful job in collections and liquidating contingency and purchases portfolios and are setting the standards on a daily basis. For this I'm eternally grateful that all of the work and frustration in this first of its kind international project which has finally reached a point of success for CTI and it's call centers and we are now poised to lead the industry forward in India and the Philippines and bring the American Collectors Association's professional standards and ethical behaviors to both call center communities to become staples in their third party collection efforts

See you next month!

Michael Kolodin