I agree with this, My wife has worked at a couple companies in billing a/r and specifically has encouraged the bosses to let her make collections type calls just to find out what's up. more often than not, she was able to not only get lots of positive information, but a significant return on past due invoices and whatnot, thereby justifying her employment. There were often cases of "oh, I didn't realize I had an invoice" or "oh, I moved and it must have gotten lost, here's my CC number to make the payment" etc...

Oh and for the record, she has had instances where she had to track someone down via googley means because their cell changed, or business address changed, etc... and she was never reprimanded for "How did you get my number?!?!?" Usually they were grateful. Granted not always ;)