If you would have told us last March what the next nine months would be like we would have said: “You have got to be kidding!” Yet, in the spirit of the old adage that what does not kill you makes you stronger, we adapted to the sudden life changes we all experienced, dug in and made the business thrive in this new environment.

First and foremost, we needed to ensure the safety and health of our employees so they could continue to serve our valued clients during this volatile period. The first objective, therefore, was to spread out our working environment and relocate our employees so they could stay safe by working remotely until the crisis had passed.

To do this meant that we committed as a company to maintaining our high standards of security, privacy and service in a new, untested work environment. This meant we needed the most up to date industry information, as well as leverage the management and service tools to connect the dots.

And we did that!

First, we relocated most of our staff to remote locations. This required that we not only ensured that they had the necessary, secure, high speed internet access available, but also the right equipment installed that worked first time, every time.

Our IT support team worked quickly with us to ensure that we were up and running as soon as possible. Every location needed secure connections and that our staff would continue to have access to VPN network functions and hardware such as printers, faxes and scanners.

Next, we had to adapt to the quickly changing environment. We were incredibly pleased that many of our vendors worked with us to modify our service agreements to stop the use of certain technologies that were not appropriate during this tough financially strained time.

We also leveraged our ongoing relationship with ACA International, a trade association for Collections firms like UCS. They were invaluable in providing daily updates on quickly changing debt collection regulations as they evolved with rapidly changing federal and state law. We are pleased to report that their efforts allowed us to meet 100% of those changes and maintain our highest level of compliance on behalf of our clients.

Of course, most importantly, we did our best to ensure our employees had a safe working environment. Those that needed to come into the office were required to comply with state and federal guidelines for maintaining healthy social distancing measures, sanitizing workstations as well as the appropriate use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

We also were extremely sensitive to the fact that for many of our staff, working remotely was a new challenge and required creativity to keep everyone in the loop on what was happening. Tools such as Slack ensured that everyone was on the same page each day, it also provided a great way to keep up individual contact when daily interactions were not possible.

Did we make it?

Yes we did! We were able to keep our valued employees safe and healthy during one of the most disruptive times any of us may experience in our working lives. On top of that, we were able to provide seamless, high quality collections services throughout this period.

Rising up, above expectations. That is what we do here at United Credit Service!

If 2020 was a tree, it would be a lemon tree. A big, abundant tree of lemons. It sure has been the ‘gift’ that keeps on giving, am I right?!

I used quotation marks around the word gift to imply sarcasm, but there are a lot of good things you can do with lemons to take away their sourness.

Here are a few of the sweet things, here in the office, that came from our COVID lemon tree.

Improved Communication - In the absence of information, people either make up their own stories or jump to a worst-case conclusion. To combat this and added stress, we upped our communication by having a daily huddle.

This gives us all a chance to ask questions or discuss concerns. It’s also where we give updates from the CDC and state recommendations as well sharing any other pertinent information.

To keep team members working remotely in the loop we started using Slack. It’s a communication platform similar to Facebook, but it’s for businesses. It not only disseminates necessary information, it also helps those at home feel less isolated and a part of the team.

More Emphasis on Celebrating the Small Victories – It takes five positive encounters to overcome every negative one. In our industry that’s not easy under normal circumstances. That’s why we are taking the time to celebrate each win—no matter how small. Guess what? The practice has snowballed. Now we are finding tons of little victories and cheering for each other on a more regular basis.