Generate more revenue while improving the customer experience.
Fix 5 common mistakes made during the collections process.
An astonishing number of organizations – a full 93% – report experiencing accounts receivable challenges like high customer churn, high days sales outstanding (DSO), and bad debt. We have uncovered 5 common mistakes that organizations make in their collections process, and more importantly, what they’ve done to rectify them. Learn some key mistakes to avoid when attempting to collect unpaid invoices and debts.
Strike the right tone
When sending collections emails, we always advocate opening with a kind, inviting tone. Keep in mind that sometimes in order to get paid, you need to start a conversation with your customer, and it pays (literally) to make them feel comfortable – acting as a partner, not an adversary.
Too Many Communications
We’re all inundated with emails, texts, calls, and other notifications. Make your communications count. If your customers feel like they are being harassed, your emails are headed straight for the spam folder – and you won’t get paid. Remember that more is not always more.
Keep It Simple
You offer your customers plenty of options, and that’s great… usually. When asking to get paid, keep it simple and don’t overcomplicate what you’re asking them to do. You need to inform them of the amount owed and direct them where to go to pay. That’s it. Making sure that message stays front and center makes it more likely that you will get paid.
Waiting too Long to Act
If you are waiting to start the late payments conversation with your customer, you are waiting too long. For many situations, best practice is to retry a credit card payment within a few days. Your first collections email should go out either immediately after the first decline of a recurring transaction or after the payment is declined a second time. The sooner you initiate the collections process, the sooner you will get paid.
Manual Processes
If your accounts receivable team is spending a lot of time on highly repetitive collections tasks, chances are that their work is not very fulfilling – or effective. You run the risk of high turnover, as teammates burn out and leave, making lots of mistakes on their way out. By automating your collections process, you enable your team to spend their time engaging with your most challenging customers, and ultimately, collecting more late payments for your company – while your automated processes do the rest.
In a best-case scenario, your team spends time and resources chasing down late payments. A worst-case scenario? Missed revenue, unfulfilled donations, and even lost customers.
Transform the financial health of your organization by bringing together payment processing, automated collections, and customer data, right in Salesforce. Talk to our sales team and discover how you can realize immediate ROI with Chargent Automated Collections – and generate more revenue with less effort.
Additional Helpful Resources
Whether you’re ready to implement new AR software today, or are not quite yet ready to make the investment, below are resources that can help you decide the next steps to take. When the time comes, you’ll enjoy increased revenue and improved operational efficiencies.
