Contact management is an integral part of collections activities. Collection automation products use information about customers, credit, accounts receivable and other important information to schedule collection activities for collectors. This frees up collectors to focus on high priority issues. Without it, collectors have to spend time reviewing reports and notes on previous conversations instead of collecting accounts receivable and increasing cash flow.
Contact information needs to be kept current to avoid time wasted to research incorrect phone numbers or emails, and review old emails or hand written notes. Maintaining contact information can be a very time consuming task whether you are using collection automation products or not. If you or members of your AR team are working remotely, manually maintaining contacts may be very difficult. In the rapidly changing environment of the new normal you need to use software tools to keep ahead of the curve on your customer contacts.
Here are some tools that you can use to assist you with contact management.
Online Notes
Online notes is a convenient feature you can use to keep track of communications with customers. It eliminates awkward, time consuming hand written notes and provides easily accessible information when you call your customers. However, someone needs to manually update customer contact information in your system as it changes to facilitate uninterrupted customer contact.
CRM
CRM software can be a tool to assist with customer contact information if your company has it. Some accounts receivable management tools, like Lockstep Collect, can integrate to popular CRM systems like Salesforce. As your sales team adds customers, they can also update with billing contacts to keep your AR team in the loop with the right contacts. Your sales team is also a great asset to have to ensure that you’re contacting the right people on the account. With integration, they can see invoices and activities completed by your AR team to support your collections efforts.
LinkedIn contacts can be used to maintain and automatically update contact information. Customer profile information and your entire email history with the contact can be accessed. Every time your customer updates contact information in LinkedIn your contact information is also updated. Contact information is also available for download with a mobile app.
With LinkedIn contacts, the information you need is updated automatically, and accessible at any time or from anywhere. LinkedIn contacts facilitates remote work, making the adjustment to the new normal more manageable.
Managing collections in the new normal is critically important to preserving your cash flow. Contact management is essential to facilitating efficient collection activities. Using LinkedIn as a tool to assist you with contact management will help to increase collections and cash flow.
Cloud-based collection automation can provide the solutions you need to manage collection activities. Lockstep Collect is a market leader in cloud-based credit and collection platforms. Lockstep Collect can help you to take full advantage of the tools you need to manage collections.
If you would like to learn how you can benefit from collection automation, please contact Lockstep Collect.
