As a business owner, you’ll know that one of the scarcest resources is time. This is particularly true if you are spending valuable hours recovering debts. But now, there’s a better way to ensure your invoices are being paid while giving you time back to spend on your business – automating your debt recovery process.
What is automated debt recovery?
It can be referred to as a digital collection centre or online portal that sends emails and texts to debtors in an automated way.
What are the benefits?
Apart from the huge time savings you’ll gain, automated debt collection helps to minimise losses and due to its nature, leaves no room for human error. As you’ll know from experience, the debt collection process is repetitive and requires multiple clerical actions that usually need repeating over and over again. Repetitive and time-consuming tasks are often prone to mistakes, especially in today’s world where we have information coming at us from multiple channels.
Mistakes can lead to two negative occurrences – either missing out on payment as the late payer gets buried under more recent invoices, or it can lead to poor relationships with clients, especially if they have already paid, but you are chasing them again for payment. A positive customer experience is crucial to any organisation, and automated debt collection systems can increase customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
The central repository of information in an automated system is another huge benefit to you and your business. As the data is at your fingertips, you are fully informed with date records and steps carried out, when calling debtors.
Speed is another key reason to look at automated debt recovery systems. You can quickly send follow ups if a payment is missed, with professional communication templates. Research data shows that the faster a late payment is chased after the due date, the more likely you are to get paid.
Automation is a clever tool, allowing you to improve debt recovery and increase the productivity or yourself or team members. And although its automated, you remain firmly in control from the outset as many situations still require human judgement and contact, particularly if you receive a call from the debtor wanting to come to an arrangement. Yet the timesaving and administrative benefits of automation are extensive.
On a practical note, you can add in payments and capture promised payment dates that allow you to check if they are late. This source of knowledge all in one place and recorded ensures that a debtor can’t escape payment without being noticed.
Use automation as your secret tool to save time, minimise human error, allow your team to work on value-add tasks, and most importantly to reduce the instances of late payment.
