As many of our early followers will remember, I hope, we used to do a weekly blog post giving an update on all things Utility Collections and things which were affecting the wider commercial utilities sector.

When the markets went through the roof closely followed by the cost-of-living crisis, we took the decision to pause the blogs for a period of time.

The everyday challenges which businesses face are very much still with us but with the markets having settled down to the ‘new normal’ and with Utility Collections having completed our recent rebrand, now felt like the right time to dust off my keyboard and restart our weekly updates.

Thank you to all of you who reached out previously to say how much you enjoyed my weekly ramblings. To all our more recent followers, welcome to the random thoughts and musings of someone who has experienced the good, the bad and the downright shocking that our beloved industry has had to offer over the past 15 years.

Now you have settled down with your bag of popcorn and are ready to go, allow me to set the scene in part one of how we have ended here. Next week, part two will bring things up to the present day and part three will lay out our vision for the coming 18 months. Meanwhile I’ll continue to shine a light into not only what we believe are the key challenges facing customers, suppliers and collections companies but also the trials and tribulations which Gary and I face running our own business and how we’ve changed individually and collectively over the past 2 ½ year.

Utility Collections was founded in 2017 by Gary with the purpose of disrupting the well-established commercial utilities debt collection process. Gary had identified that many suppliers were moving from early collections to preparing sites for disconnection and he established there was a different and much better way to deal with these accounts. As people within the industry will know, once a site is disconnected it becomes infinitely more difficult to collect the arrears and many customers can lose their livelihood and main source of income.

By building a small team with utility expertise as opposed to the traditional model of people collections experience, Gary demonstrated exceptional success rates, improved customers resolutions and increased collections – a win-win if ever there was one.
Coming out of lockdown 2, which feels like a lifetime ago, Gary and I got together and decided to take this innovative product to the wider market, not knowing how it would be received and if there would be an opportunity for us to support multiple suppliers. As it turns out, it was greater than we ever imagined at the time and came with a few sleepless nights along the way…..
Part two next week….can you contain your excitement?

By Kevin Harris (Chief Commercial Officer)


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