What do I need before engaging with a new customer?

When engaging with a new customer, it's important to set yourself up for success on the chance you later have to send them to collections. Read on for the most important pieces of information to collect from your new customers.

When engaging with a new customer, whether they are an individual consumer or a company, the following information is essential to collect on the chance you end up needing to send them to collections:

• First and last name
• Phone number
• Address
  
  

These bits of data are required by all collections agencies as they allow the agency to track down the correct debtor.

When engaging with a new consumer or B2C debtor, we advise also collecting the customer's date of birth and social security number, as this is the required data to report a debt to the credit bureaus. Check out this Help Center article for more information on how credit reporting works.