When collecting receivables, it is imperative to respect consumer rights. If you don’t you risk alienating good customers or possibly risking a report to a federal agency for harassment or abuse. Respecting their consumer rights during debt collection is important in maintain good relationship with your customers and maintaining your businesses good reputation.
Double- and Triple-Check Your Data
Having accurate data can prevent you from making mistakes during the collection process. For instance, if you have redundant or repetitive data in your database, can cause you to accidentally contact the same debtor numerous times in a day, which is bound to irritate even the most understand customer. Actually repeated and continual calls are one of the top mistakes companies make when collecting debt. When you contact your debtors consistently over a short period of time will disrupt them and even impede their ability to focus causing them to be even more unlikely to pay the debt.
Start With Friendly Reminders
When you start the debt collection process with a friendly letter, you have a better chance of avoiding bad feelings, which could lead to lost business in the future. Sometimes your
customers might misplace invoices or even forget to write a check. Friendly reminders give your customers the chance to make good on their promise to pay without mentioning debt collection at all. When friendly reminders don’t work you can take the next step in the debt collection process.
Know the Rules and Regulations
If you are going to try collecting debts on your own, make sure you start by learning the rules. The federal government lists several regulations that limit behavior during debt recovery attempts, such as calling early in the morning or late at night, using threatening language, and ignoring cease and desist notifications. Many states may have their own regulations as well, so it’s important to be well versed to stay compliant. Without knowing the rules, or ensuring your staff knows the rules you could easily violate your customers rights. If you don’t have time to learn the regulations in your area it is important to outsource your debt collection.
Respect Your Customers Who Haven’t Paid
Everyone falls on hard times sometimes. They can struggle to pay their debts, and fail to remit payments for invoices even though they actually want to meet their obligations. When collecting debts, you don’t want to allow your employees or even yourself to disparage your customers. By doing this you will push away the potential customers who are eager to pay their obligations, even though they are in hard times currently. Working with these customers on paying their debt, will not only cause your customers to respect your brand more and continue their loyalty to your business. It is important to make it clear that you expect your staff to respect customers during every stage of the relationship.
Respecting your customer rights may appear easy, but the line of respect is easy to cross. If you and your business is not making respect a top priority when it comes to your debt collection you will pay for it in the end. TSC Accounts Receivable Solutions offers the perfect solution for your business when it comes to debt collection. We are dedicated to providing excellent and respectful debt collection for all size businesses. If you are interested in outsourcing your debt collection give us a call at 760-444-5526.