What can debt collection for startups do for your business? Founders grapple with this question when faced with chargebacks and unpaid balances. Is debt collection for startups right for me? What can it do to my business? What will it do for my brand? Should I do it myself or outsource?
Is debt collection for startups effective?
Debt collection is a natural part of the customer life cycle, and neglecting it often creates more problems than it prevents. As a machine learning based, digital first provider with high consumer satisfaction scores, we know it’s an effective tool that can be used without the historically negative connotations and with positive brand impact. Debt collection augments your internal A/R efforts, adding a partner who not only has access to tools you don’t have, but also has more negotiation experience and a ton more data – on the right channel, time, tone, and offer to use with individual consumers.
Is debt collection for startups right for you?
Do customers owe you money for a post-paid service or chargebacks? Are you happy with your A/R process, or is it a draining effort that no one in your team likes taking care of? If recovering lost funds is painful, as it is for most, you need help. Debt collection is a cheaper alternative to simply losing the money or keeping an in house collections team, especially if the relationship with the customer has become adversarial.
We think that debt collection has a strong relationship component. When defaulted customers pay through us, they often do so because they feel that they’re being heard for the first time since their dispute with our clients started. Sometimes a customer has a bad customer care experience, a billing error, or a misunderstanding about an invoice, and suddenly they’re 90 days behind. A lot of late customers are just making excuses – but we’ve built the expertise for dealing with them at scale.
Buy or build?
You should talk to your customers before sending them to us. A structured process is key to not only getting paid yourself as well as our success for you down the road. It always helps to start the process in house (don’t forget to teach them how to handle excuses). After the first 15-30 days past due you can ship them over and let us take care of them. A good debt collector will recover money; a great collector will recover money, plus some of your old customers, and help you grow your business.