Ask any debt recovery service in Australia and they will tell you that a robust and well thought out collection strategy is crucial when it comes to shaping the future of an organisation. A comprehensive debt collection strategy should be akin to a well thought out business strategy. It should be highly efficient, and it needs to maximise its available resources at the lowest cost possible to get it done. Most debt recovery services in Australia need to become comfortable with modern technologies and out of the box methodologies in order to maintain a legal and long-term outlook towards debt collections.
A multitude of factors affects the collectability of your accounts receivable. These elements need to be carefully considered prior to the formulation of a debt collection strategy to significantly increase your odds for success while recovering.
Here are some of those key elements.
Customer Focused Operations
A large number of debtors often cited lengthy processes and complicated systems as the primary factor behind their lack of interest when it comes to clearing their debts. In fact, when the debt repayment process is made significantly easier, then the customer’s chances of repaying the debt becomes significantly higher. As such, it is important for any debt recovery service in Australia to have customer-focused operations that emphasise easy quick payment platforms. When the debtor’s payments are made efficient and secure then they are more likely to respond to the invoices and payments receivables. There are many Self-Service portals like payment apps, and even automated IVR systems that can enable a debtor to securely and easily pay back the debt. There are also pre-programmed settlement portals where debtors are free to schedule payments and set reminders without any human interaction in the first place.
Constant Communications
Communication is the one element of your debt collection strategy that will be subject to constant evolution and change. As such any debt recovery services in Australia need to keep themselves abreast with any changes or transformations in communication. It is crucial to automate the debt collection process as mentioned earlier. This not only helps in cutting down allocated costs to debt recovery but has also proven to provide consistent results when it comes to debtors clearing their outstanding amounts. Since automated communication channels help improve the customer experience to such a degree that the customer becomes more willing to clear the debt, it is more important than ever to leverage every modern technology of communication that further increases the convenience for the debtor. Older communication methods like direct phone calls or text messages have proven to slowly degrade in their effectiveness when it comes to convincing the debtor to clear their outstanding amounts. As such, this lack of success towards older communication methods proves that a well-functioning debt recovery service in Australia needs to reconsider or modify its current communication setup.
Analytics
Analytics can strongly assist both business owners and any debt recovery service in Australia. The usage of analytics in the process of debt collection helps a business owner avoid any difficulty with their collections as well as bad debt. Analytics can help an individual effortlessly assess a customer’s payment profile including their receivables and whether the payment is done in instalments or in full. This also helps the customer as once a business understands the overall pattern of accounts receivables, then they can advise the customer in further protecting them from any potential unwarranted risks that they might encounter. The strongest advantage of applied analytics is the ability to track prior customer payments and measure their tendency to be late with any debt. This allows you to gauge the customer’s level of complacency towards their payments and allows any debt recovery service in Australia to get ahead of possible problematic accounts. With applied analytics, a debt collection strategy utilises a holistic approach towards debt repayment that is significantly more effective and helps any business maintain an uninterrupted cash flow.
Centralised Systems
For any debt recovery service in Australia, apart from debt recovery, the primary focus is on cutting the costs and the number of resources that are allocated to their existing debt collection processes. One of the most effective ways to reduce these costs is to use a centralised programme that allows all personnel involved with the collections process to view similar accounts on one database. When properly set up and adequately maintained, a centralised system will have the requisite information that is available on a particular receivable. The best part is that this information can be easily searched and located on a centralised system by any personnel involved in the collection strategy. This easy to access information allows business owners and debt recovery agencies to keep their costs low when it comes to the entire process of recovery.
