Write-off recovery is often treated as an extension of bucket collections. In practice it is a different operation: contact data is stale, customers have moved, and the first attempt rarely produces a result.
Tracing comes before calling. Address verification, alternate number checks and neighbourhood enquiry establish whether an account can be worked at all, and that assessment itself is valuable information for the client.
Cases should then stay under periodic review instead of being closed after two attempts. Recovery on aged portfolios comes from persistence across cycles, supported by an honest status trail on each account.