Start by killing the false archetype. Someone is technically in collections from the moment they're one day overdue — a declined card, travel, or "I was busy building a company and I forgot to pay my bills." Then map every customer on two axes — capability to pay and willingness to pay — and design a different experience for each quadrant instead of treating everyone like they refuse to pay.
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Josh's benchmark is deliberately absurd for the industry: Four Seasons. "Why can't you be respectful and treat people with empathy and provide a really good user experience?" The reason collections is ugly is partly that "there's never been this idea of customer experience."
In practice, technology reads the signals customers give off — even when they don't realize it — to place them on the quadrant and adapt. If the phone isn't ringing through, the SMS isn't clicked and the emails aren't opened, the right conclusion may not be "sue this person" — they could be sitting in a villa in Italy with a different SIM, genuinely unaware. And for the person with both money and willingness, make paying frictionless: an SMS link double-tapped with Apple Pay, not a printed barcode and cash at Australia Post.