Credit and collections activities need to be automated more than ever. AR staffing issues, rising delinquencies, and the need for cash flow to finance your company through the recovery make efficient and effective collections essential.
It is a challenge with manual collections to touch a customer the number of times needed to meet collection goals.
- It takes about 25-40 minutes to prepare for, place, and record notes on a customer call.
- Approximately 40-60 calls per day can be made by the average AR team.
- The result is less than 10% of your customers can be contacted after invoice presentment, because your collectors are focused on the 60 day and older delinquent accounts.
Automated credit and collections processes provide:
- Automated communications – emails, text messages and recordings
- Customer self-service – customer portals
- Collection activity management – automated collection prioritization
Automated processes make it possible to contact your customers more frequently through multiple channels. More customer contact results in more collections.
It’s important to find the right balance of automated and manual collections activities. There are points in the process where well-timed personal contact should be used along with automated activities.
Rules for Personal Contact in the Collections Process
- Start with automated communication
- Move into personal contact as customers become more past due.
A personal call may be needed to collect a past due amount. Make those calls only when they are needed. Begin with automated communications, and move to personal contact if a problem develops.
Relationship Check-ins
Good customer relationships are important and can be useful.
Check-in with a customer on an anniversary or other occasion. Your team will have more time for relationship building, when you use automated credit and collections processes.
Automated collections activities together with the right mix of personal contact will increase collections, working capital and net income. They can save time so your team can contact customers to collect problem accounts and develop customer relationships. Automation is essential to an efficient collections process.
With a connected accounting solution for your AR and AP teams to coordinate work with customers and vendors, you can go digital and enjoy the benefits of office automation.
Lockstep, a leader in cloud-based connected accounting solutions, can help you boost productivity and optimize cash flow with:
- Digital Onboarding – Collect master data directly from your customers and vendors
- Accounting Inbox – Make it easy to divvy up work and track progress
- Smart Automation – Automate menial task with accounting integration
- Online Accounts – Give customers and vendors online access to their accounts
Lockstep is an experienced software partner that can help you increase efficiency and accelerate cash flow.
If you would like to learn more about how you can benefit from connected accounting solutions, please contact Lockstep at www.lockstephq.com.
