Payment collection is a necessary evil for a lot of businesses. You need it to retrieve what is due, but tracking down customers and begging them to pay up can waste your company time and money, and the process can become difficult to manage.

There are solutions, however, that can simplify the collections process, making it cost-effective and more efficient. Let’s discuss some of these now:

Invoicing best practices

To improve your collections process, make changes during the invoicing stage to eliminate a good percentage of people from even reaching collections. Here are some tips:

Be detailed – On your invoices, be as detailed as possible and highlight the amount due along with the due date. Also, make prominent your contact information and how the customer can pay.

Set clear terms – Set up terms and ensure the customer is aware of them before services are rendered. Include the terms in any contract or agreement and also discuss them verbally, if applicable.

Be prompt – Send invoices no more than 24 hours after the customer expects them.

Text messaging

Are you still calling customers manually to remind them of payments? Maybe you have left several messages, but they are not reachable? Calling people manually ties up important company time and resources. One way to make your collections process more cost-effective and efficient is to use an automated system for payment notifications such as text messaging.

It’s not uncommon for customers to forget to send payment and some even rely on businesses to remind them. This is where automated payment notifications are particularly helpful. And since text messages have an open rate of 99%, sending texts allows you to connect with more of your customers, faster.

Voice Broadcast

Voice broadcast is another automated solution to help you simplify your collections process and make it more efficient. Voice broadcast messages are especially valuable in the early stages of the collection process as many customers simply forget that a payment is due. For pennies a call, you can send reminder calls to these early-cycle customers, saving you time and money rather than using a live agent to make manual calls.

If you use voice broadcast for your reminder messages, add interactive voice response menus so customers can switch to pay immediately. Also, give customers the option to speak to a live agent, as some may want to pay their debt by communicating with a live person to discuss payment options, incorrect billing, etc. To stay efficient, use your IVR menus for initial customer verification to speed up the process before they transfer. 

Payments and collections are necessary, but they can be a painful process for most businesses. But using some of these methods to streamline your collections process and automate your tasks can save you time and money, not to mention a little sanity!

We like to work with companies to help them improve their processes and save money. Voice broadcast is an effective strategy that allows businesses like yours to become more efficient and recoup operating costs. If you would like to learn how voice broadcast can help you, or you want to try it out for free, simply sign up for a free account here, no commitment required.