Consistency is hugely important when it comes to effective business communications.
If you are able to keep up a constant stream of communications with your customers it keeps you both on the same page, lets you update them on vital information, and helps you constantly build on those positive client relationships that are so vital to getting repeat business.
When it comes to maintaining a consistent line of communication, nothing beats email.
Yes, it might not be as personal as a phone call or face-to-face meeting, but it sidesteps a lot of the constraints of those situations.
In our increasingly socially distanced and digital world, email has become the communication tool of choice. This is especially true when it comes to applying effective credit control to your accounts receivables.
Late invoices are a major issue for most small businesses and nothing beats polite persistent reminders when it comes to getting you paid without impacting your customer relationships.
The big caveat to being in constant contact with your customers is time. Unless you have a staff dedicated to it, which comes with a cost consideration, most business owners simply don’t have the time to send dozens, maybe hundreds, of emails a day.
That’s where automation comes in!
The benefits of using automation in your credit control process
The reality of the modern business environment is that, if you’re a small or medium enterprise (SME) you are probably waiting for someone to pay you.
Globally, small businesses are owed a staggering $3 trillion in unpaid invoices. Around 10 per cent of all invoices are paid late and the UK is one of the worst offenders. In the UK, around 18 per cent of invoices are paid late and around nine per cent are not paid at all, becoming bad debt.
This issue disproportionately impacts smaller businesses that often lack a dedicated credit control or accounts receivables team. Most SMEs would rather write off bad debt than pursue traditional debt collections methods, meaning nearly ten per cent of their income is simply lost.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of most small businesses, so unpaid invoices piling up can, and do, force otherwise successful businesses into insolvency.
Automating your accounts receivables offers businesses all the benefits of having an in-house credit control team, without the extra expense.
It also frees up the staff, who otherwise would have been combining running your accounts receivables with their other responsibilities, to refocus on their actual job.
Automation comes with a whole host of benefits including:
- The minimization of human error and the delays associated with correcting those errors.
- Increased AR staff job satisfaction and productivity.
- The ability to send out large volumes of emails in a short period of time.
- Greater relationship building with automated ‘thank you’ emails on payment.
- The freeing-up of skilled staff from basic communication and data entry duties.
- Specifying the style of communication, and the information contained within, for different customer segments.
The most common downside to automation is the fact that clearly automated emails can be easy to ignore and lack the personal touch.
Chaser’s advanced AR automation platform puts the human touch back into automation, allowing businesses to reap the benefits of automation while still building on their customer relationship and branding.
Adding the human touch back into automation
With Chaser’s innovative automation platform, all the emails sent appear to be coming from your personal email address. Our range of email templates can be customized with your individual branding and language.
Automated emails can be sent to send at different times, even for the same customer, to avoid the bulk emailing that is so indicative of outdated automation. Different email templates can be used for different types of customer, to reflect your specific relationship with them.
Using the data available in the Chaser hub, you can time your emails to have the most impact, based on your customer’s previous payment data. You can also align your AR automation efforts with your customer’s payment schedules to avoid chasing an invoice that’s already been paid.
Alongside the benefits of our innovative automation options, each payment reminder sent out by Chaser includes a link to a customer-specific Payment Portal.
Our unique Payment Portal can be customized with your specific branding and have all of the information your customers need to make prompt payment.
To give your customers the largest number of payment options, our Payment Portals support PayPal and Stripe payment as well as credit and debit cards.
Chaser’s automated credit control has allowed our customers to chase over £3 billion worth of invoices to date, with an over 80 per cent success rate.
For that 20 per cent of bad debt that is usually written off, we also offer a new way to approach debt recovery. Instead of traditional aggressive debt collections techniques, we mediate between you and your customers using polite persistence.
We specialize in getting you your money without negatively impacting your customer relationships.
Instead of a lengthy handover, unpaid invoices can be escalated to us in just two clicks and our transparent pricing models means you will get an upfront quote before you engage our services.
If you’re interested in how Chaser’s automation can help you get paid faster and more often, contact us today.
