Maintaining good relationships with consumers, employees, business partners and vendors, like Teletrack, is the key to operating a sustainable, profitable payday advance company. Just ask Jeb Smith, Co-Owner of J and J Management. He relies on Teletrack to help his employees maintain positive consumer relationships, which is helping his organization build long-term profitability by providing fraud risk assessment.
“Our objective is to create and maintain a personal business relationship between our consumers and our staff,” said Smith. “This has been our focus and approach to the lending business based upon our history of more than 50 years in the installment loan business.”
Jeb and his brother Jay know a lot about running a business for the long-term. The owners of J and J Management are the third generation in the family business. Their family has been operating in the small loan business since the 1940’s and began operating in the payday advance industry in 1997. Their organization now operates more than 60 payday advance stores and 15 finance companies throughout the Southeast. Teletrack is helping the company build and maintain their relationships with consumers.
“Teletrack, if you use it properly, helps you manage your business and identify your consumer base.”
“We want good consumers and long-term relationships. Teletrack helps us identify when consumers are struggling to handle their situation so that we can help them manage their responsibilities,” said Jeb. “We don’t just want the consumers’ next transaction, we want to develop a relationship with our consumer to service their future needs. And Teletrack, if you use it properly, helps you manage your business and identify your consumer base.”
The company emphasizes the importance of using Teletrack regularly and consistently to maintain consumer relationships. Employee training at J and J Management reinforces the company’s attitude towards the next consumer transaction. During training, employees are encouraged to “use Teletrack as a lead to determine what other fraud risk assessment information should be gathered on the consumer. Analyze the Teletrack information and then discover the rest of the consumer’s story.”
The company’s established procedures help the many long-term employees with J and J Management make consistent decisions during the loan process. “We only want to do business with consumers that want to do business with us,” said Jeb. “And when they are not qualified, Teletrack lets us know.” Knowing the consumer’s background and current activity is important to the company’s profitability which is why employees use Teletrack everyday.
“We pull a Teletrack report on every new consumer and also pull a Teletrack report when the consumer has been inactive for a period of time,” said Smith. “We encourage and train our staff to follow those guidelines.”
J and J Management also has policies regarding consumers who rewrite loans with the company. When a consumer is actively open for a number of transactions, store policy is to update the consumer’s bank information, check stub and run a Teletrack report. Store employees are trained to use Teletrack to assist in their control of delinquent accounts.
“We certainly understand that managing delinquency is a primary advantage for using Teletrack.”
Employee training is a key to maintaining good consumer relationships, which lowers the number of delinquent accounts. “We certainly understand that managing delinquency is a primary advantage for using Teletrack,” said Jeb. “We audit each store’s activity to help ensure that Teletrack is being used to report the returned checks (skips) on a month-to-month basis. We encourage and train our staff to follow these guidelines.”
J and J Management has instituted policies for reporting skips to Teletrack, and reporting those consumers that make good. “Delinquency is the next biggest concern besides gaining consumer base and revenue. We report all of our skips to Teletrack. Employees are then expected to report to Teletrack when consumers pay in-full after being reported delinquent.”
The company’s focus on long-term relationships make handling delinquent accounts a crucial but delicate part of running a successful business. “We apply proven collection techniques and consistent follow-up, but in the end our objective is not just to collect the money, but to recover the consumer’s good will for future business opportunities.”
By managing delinquencies, focusing on customer service, and training employees, J and J Management is growing its cash advance business. The company is focused on modest growth every year built around these quality relationships. “Our business strategy is very conservative. We prefer a local hometown style of business. We open a business location when we know we have the trained and proven staff to operate profitably. We prefer quality and profitability over quantity and size,” said Jeb.
“We have a lot of long-term employees and we have been very successful at retaining quality people.” said Jeb. He believes that people want a connection with the company they work for where they get recognition and have the opportunity to build something for themselves. “We have primarily expanded our organization through equity partnerships with employees that demonstrated the capability and desire for business ownership. We encourage personal ambition and actively seek new partnerships.” J and J Management knows this is a business of relationships; at the customer, employee, business partner, and vendor level. “It’s all about successful relationships with people.”
“We are trying to build an organization that will sustain itself. We want to grow and also provide great opportunities for the people that come to work for us,” said Jeb. “And we are successful at what we do. Teletrack helps us continue to be successful.”
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