Individuals tasked to collect tardy payments are called account collectors or bill collectors. These collectors can work for a company's internal debt collection department or can be employed by a debt collection agency. In some cases when bills or accounts collections are outsourced to call centers, the bill collectors may be employed by another party apart from both the original creditor (the company to which the debt is originally owed) and the credit collection agency.

Whoever their employers are, bill collectors perform the same essential function of collecting debts through established and accepted means. Everything that debt collectors do is aimed at collecting full payments.

Bill collectors are in charge of getting in touch with the debtors to inform them of their overdue accounts or bills. Bill collectors do this by sending out letters informing the debtors about their total amount due, the details of their debt, and the period of time that they have to make complete payments. These letters also detail the repercussions of noncompliance. More commonly, however, debt collectors communicate with the accountholders through the telephone. After all, this method has a faster response time than mailed correspondence. For more efficiency, bill collectors usually use software that automatically dials the numbers of accountholders. This saves them time because the software checks the phone numbers for validity and only those numbers from which a response is obtained are put through.

In debt collection by telephone, debt collectors must abide by legally sanctioned debt collection practices like calling within the hours of 8 am to 9 pm unless the debtor expressly allows calls beyond these hours. Bill collectors may not also call a debtor's place of employment if the employer explicitly forbids it. Bill collectors may not also misrepresent themselves when calling the debtor as well as trick the debtor in accepting collect calls. Debt collectors may not also threaten and harass the debtor or use profane and obscene language. These and all other debt collection guidelines are stipulated in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Debt collectors are also tasked to find and locate missing debtors. If a debtor cannot be contacted through the recorded phone number and address, debt collectors will call former neighbors, relatives, coworkers and other third parties to find the debtor. They will also check postal and other public records for the same purpose. Bill collectors are aided in this by advanced computer applications.