Can Agents Work?

Jobs / Office and administrative support / 43-3011.00

Bill and Account Collectors

Locate and notify customers of delinquent accounts by mail, telephone, or personal visit to solicit payment. Duties include receiving payment and posting amount to customer's account, preparing statements to credit department if customer fails to respond, initiating repossession proceedings or service disconnection, and keeping records of collection and status of accounts.

US jobs
158,830
Median wage
$47,030 a year
Job family
Office and administrative support

Can agents do the work of bill and account collectors?

We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Office and administrative support:

  • Task levelStrongOn computer-use and office-task benchmarks, top agents pass most tasks: 90.2% on OSWorld-Verified (humans: 72.4%), 83.1% on SpreadsheetBench, and 63.3% on WorkArena L1 under the standard protocol. Limits: many top entries are self-submitted and not re-run by the maintainers, and on TheAgentCompany's multi-step workplace tasks the best agent resolves 42.9%.
  • Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's GDPval deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons, but GDPval tasks are one-shot and fully specified. No benchmark in our collection tests multi-day administrative work, such as running a calendar or a purchasing process.

Benchmarks for the job family

These cover work in office and administrative support, not always this occupation's tasks.

Typical tasks

From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.

  • Record information about financial status of customers and status of collection efforts.
  • Locate and notify customers of delinquent accounts by mail, telephone, or personal visits to solicit payment.
  • Locate and monitor overdue accounts, using computers and a variety of automated systems.
  • Arrange for debt repayment or establish repayment schedules, based on customers' financial situations.
  • Advise customers of necessary actions and strategies for debt repayment.
  • Answer customer questions regarding problems with their accounts.
  • Persuade customers to pay amounts due on credit accounts, damage claims, or nonpayable checks, or to return merchandise.
  • Confer with customers by telephone or in person to determine reasons for overdue payments and to review the terms of sales, service, or credit contracts.
  • Receive payments and post amounts paid to customer accounts.
  • Trace delinquent customers to new addresses by inquiring at post offices, telephone companies, credit bureaus, or through the questioning of neighbors.
  • Notify credit departments, order merchandise repossession or service disconnection, and turn over account records to attorneys when customers fail to respond to collection attempts.
  • Sort and file correspondence and perform miscellaneous clerical duties, such as answering correspondence and writing reports.
Other job titles for this occupation (46)

Account Representative · Accounts Receivable Specialist (AR Specialist) · Collection Agent · Collection Specialist · Collector · Debt Collector · Patient Access Specialist · Patient Account Representative · Telephone Collector · Account Receivable Associate · Account Service Representative · Accounts Collector · Bad Credit Collector · Bilingual Collections Specialist · Bill Collector · Billing Representative · Car Repossessor · Chaser · Claims Collector · Collection Clerk · Collection Representative · Collections Agent · Collections Analyst · Collections Associate · Collections Clerk · Collections Coordinator · Collections Officer · Collections Representative · Collections Specialist · Credit and Collections Analyst · Credit Coordinator · Credit Specialist · Customer Account Specialist · Data Collector · Dunner · Field Collector · Installment Agent · Installment Loan Collector · Insurance Collector · Medical Collections Specialist · Medical Collector · Patient Financial Service Representative · Payment Collector · Rent Collector · Repossession Agent · Repossessor