It’s an annoying fact of life but some businesses and industries are prone to needing debt collection support more than others. Is your business one of these? Let’s take a look at whether your type of business is more likely to need a helping hand from online debt collection services like iCollect.
If you fit one or more of the following, then online debt recovery software could be a good fit for your business:
1. Do you have experience in ensuring that debtors with late invoices pay them within a reasonable time?
2. Do you have a cost effective and affordable way to recover debts to ensure a healthy cash flow for your business?
3. Do you have an accounts person or a system to keep on top of slow payers?
4. Have you had experience with bad debtors before?
If you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, a cloud based online debt recovery system could be the solution, to alleviate your stress, save time and ensure your debts are being paid.
And to turn this on its head, online debt recovery can be the ideal solution for both you and the debtor. It’s a digital world and most of us are now familiar with purchasing goods and services online, as well as transacting bills and money transfers. Customer experience and ways of interaction have also moved into this digital realm. In essence, people – your customers and debtors – are accustomed to transacting online and in many cases, prefer to do business this way as its easy, fast and habitual.
Not only are customer preferences changing but in other ways we are being forced to change. With postal services only being delivered every two days, and the fact that although Millennials love their phone, they prefer texting and messaging to phone calls, and digital debt collection becomes a real asset in your toolkit.
A good way therefore to help facilitate fast and easy payment is to communicate with your debtors and give them the capability to pay their debt online.
Why is digital online debt recovery a win-win method?
When you send payment reminders by email or text, you can provide payment links so the debtor can settle their debt while they are online.
It also means you can contact the debtor within minutes (because the average person checks their smartphone 150 times a day, you have a captive audience!), instead of waiting for posted letters to work their way through the mail system. iCollect offers posted letter formats as well, and we recommend that you back up digital delivery with a written letter too.
A digital service is perceived to be less threatening as we are used to more automated forms of communication, so you are less likely to burn bridges with a repeat customer in the future.
If you are a small business without a dedicated accounts person, you’ll benefit from time and personnel savings.
And if you do happen to have a larger volume of debts than you’d like, online debt recovery makes the process a lot easier to increase your service volume.
Don’t forget that you can also take a test and learn approach using the smarts of the built-in reporting of online debt collection systems and the ability to see when electronic or text communications were sent and when debts were paid. You may find that certain subject lines or call to actions lead to faster payment or that certain times of the day or days of the week spur more action, so you can refine your solution to ensure you’re maximising your cashflow back into the business.
In summary, digital debt collection gives consumers and business owners the opportunity to engage with their debts in a method that works best for them and that achieves the desired result – payment!
