What's Debt Collection? How does it work? What is the State of Debt Collection in 2014? Debt Collection is a hotly debated industry in 2014. With more enforcement action and more consumers getting into debt, many hold to firm opinions about the pros and cons of the trade. To help the discussion with some facts, we're proud to present TrueAccord's 2014 State of Debt Collection infographic. Here's you'll find answers to common questions and misconceptions like: Debt collectors only buy debt for cents on the dollar and collect as much of it as possible (wrong!) Debt collection is loosely regulated (absolutely wrong!) There is a lot of money in debt collection (true indeed) And more.

Is getting paid art or science? The proponents of the "Art" argument will say that getting paid needs the personal touch - one needs to know who to talk to, when, what to say and how to push. While we don't discount the personal touch (and will use it in specifically chosen cases), we view getting paid as clearly a numbers problem, one that lends itself well to optimization and analysis. What can you learn from our experience so you can write and send better demands for payment? When To Send Demands for Payment Optimizing sending day and time is crucial, since you want to place the demand for payment so it gets the most attention. Before that, though, comes the simplest optimization of all: send an invoice immediately after work is done. Every day you wait delays your payment, even if the customer pays immediately upon receipt. There's no need to wait. What are ideal times for sending a demand for payment? Our data shows that Thursday afternoon and Friday are the strongest days. It makes sense, intuitively - your customer has more time to respond since the post-weekend craziness has subsided. On Friday, they might be calm and thinking about the weekend. Either way, the data clearly shows these days and times to be ideal. Better Demands for Payment: Email or Letter? Unfortunately, it depends. Using emails vs. letters is clear when the cost is prohibitive (letters are much more expensive), if you're dealing with customers who are less technical (and are less likely to answer or read emails) or when timing and promptness are extremely important (letters are unpredictable). Beyond that, here are a few pros and cons to consider: Direct mail has much higher open and response rates than email. Even sophisticated users have grown so accustomed to email, that they tend to open it much less. Emails allow direct response. It's harder, though far from impossible, to allow quick online payments through a letter (TrueAccord customers have this option enabled in their Debtor Dashboard, so they can easily pay online even after getting a letter). Emails allow much more testing and iteration. If you have a large number of debts, the aptitude and time, you can improve your email response rate much more than you would letters. At the end of the day, both methods are helpful when used in conjunction, and sometimes followed up with a call or a text message. Combining communication channels is an issue we spend a lot of time thinking about. What Should the Demands for Payment Say? If you're wondering about the content, we have two pieces of advice for you. First, read our short guide about 3 Invoice Design Tips. This will get you started. Then, wait for and download our upcoming eBook - Collection Letters That Work. It will provide a great starting point for everything direct mail. Bottom Line Getting paid on time is a science, although there aren't many available sources that tell you where to start. Future posts will share more of our insights about writing, designing and delivering great demands for payment. What's your advice on getting paid on time? Share with us in the comments!  

After many attempts to resolve matters in a friendly manner, you may reach the end of the line in trying to get a customer to pay what they owe you. You tried demands for payment, tried calling, maybe even using a debt collector. Should you sue? Is suing late customers worth it? Going to court definitely an option. Before you do, consider the following: Do you have proper documentation? If you provided a service or goods without a contract, made concessions without documentation, never properly demanded payment and cannot prove your claims, you're in trouble. Watch this video. Realize you should have done things differently to begin with. You probably do not have a case. Did you exhaust all other options? Some people juggle many bills or are just too irresponsible to pay. One thing in common all people who share this behavior have is the tendency to only handle urgent matters. Have you made a credible threat? Sometimes, a mere demand letter from your lawyer, rather than you, explaining the situation before going to court, is going to get you paid. Which court will you go to? Are you within the boundaries of a small claims court, or should you aim for a Civil Trial? Do you have a lawyer, and are you up for the process if you need to get legal representation? What happens if your customer counter sues? If you have good answers to the questions above, suing your (now ex-)customer is a viable option. Sometimes, it is the only option left. Before you do, make sure that you are prepared, and know what to expect.  

Why write collection letters at all? We believe that collection should be an integral part of your business practices. While we explain why you need a professional collection partner to help you, we also advocate talking to your customers as well as doing what you can to recover money that's owed to you before sending late customer to collection. After all, increasing retention by 5% increases profits by 25-95%. How do you approach recovering money efficiently? Writing better collection letters is part of the equation. Writing Better Collection Letters - What's in the eBook? In this eBook you'll get a review of why and when to use letters instead of emails or calls, and a few free letter samples that you can edit and use. Further more, we'll highlight a few key terms and phrases our behavioral economics use when writing our collection copy. If You Plan To Write Collection Letters On Your Own - This eBook Is For You. Good luck! Tell us how it works for you, and try us out if you need more help.  

When we tell our customers that our automated system can work on any size of debt, from $3 and up, we get asked two questions: Really?! Why collect on low amounts? Let's take care of them one at a time. Why send small debts to debt collection? Really?! Yes, really. Our system is automated enough to allow any debt over $3 and up to be worked on. We don't care if you have a single $3 debt or a portfolio worth millions, we're sure we can do something for you. That's because our system uses a wide portfolio of online data sources instead of buying expensive data from specialized providers, and our highly skilled customer engagement specialists only talk to specific people at specific times - when they are most ready to engage. Our technology allows us to do what we do. Why Would I Send Small Debts To Debt Collection? First, we believe everyone should pay what they owe. We give anyone in our system their fair share of warning, time and payment options, but unless they have a valid complaint - we expect them to pay. Second, some companies' whole business is for small amounts. If your Average Order Value is under $300, you're going to have a very difficult time finding a serious service to help you recover what you're owed. Anyone can send one demand letter and report debtors to credit bureaus for a flat fee, but providing a full service is much more challenging. Last, TrueAccord was founded to support reinventing Debt Collection and promote conversation and retention. People who owe small amounts are more likely to default not because they don't have money, but because of a more profound problem with your service or product. That's why we always recommend that you talk to your customers. This insight, and the ability to bring them back on board, are worth a decent amount of effort. Bottom Line There's a lot of potential in small balances: product and service insight, retention, and of course - recovery. We built our system to be able to deal with these amounts especially for these reasons, and we made it available to all so you, too, can benefit - and get paid more in the process.

Cash flow is one of the most important things for any business, but a small business's life often hinges on nothing more than 3-4 payments that can be late. And, admittedly, sometimes customers don't pay you for reasons you can't understand, or worse, make obviously weak excuses. All this might tempt you to send them to aggressive collections and be done with them. Based on our experience, this can be a mistake. Consider this: customer retention and up-sell is immensely more profitable than acquisition. When you take what you had to pay to acquire a customer into consideration, not every short delay in payment requires an all-out attack. TrueAccord customers see more than $2 in additional business for every $1 paid by late payer we retained for them. That's a big number. This isn't a plea to never fire customers. Some customers are bad for your business, suck your energy and shouldn't be allowed to be your customers anymore. And, of course, we'll be happy to go after any late customer for you. But keep in mind that some people may genuinely be in temporary financial issues, and do not know how to communicate that. Losing a highly profitable customer because of a temporary mistake will hurt you in the long run. Bad things happen to good people, too. There are two scenarios where we recommend that you consider taking customers back: When they paid in full after encouragement. It's easy to think that late customers who didn't pay on your first prompt are bad and need to be ditched. We don't see that being the case. In many instances, customers who are referred to TrueAccord pay after their complaint or dispute have been heard. They want to vent their frustration - and it could be about something as simple as a rude customer care agent. We view ourselves as your outsourced retention department, and if we get someone to pay in full, they most likely did so in good faith. Take them back. When they are on their path to pay in full. This case requires a bigger leap of faith, but providing a service to the customer on a pre-paid basis can go a long way to get them back on your platform. You have customers because they want your product or service, and they continue to want them even when they're late or defaulted on a payment. Offering your goods with an upfront payment, once they've gone through enough of their payment plan, will provide them with more incentive to pay everything they owe you. Alternatively, you can demand collateral or personal guarantee, as part of your high-risk credit policy. Beyond recovering lost fund, a recovery and retention service can help you sort the good guys from the bad ones. Remember - growing your business is your top priority; don't let anger lead your decisions on who to work with. Develop a high risk credit policy or demand pre payment, and take the good ones back. Your churn will drop as well as your long term customer acquisition costs. And, as we keep mentioning, there's a lot your can learn from your defaulted customers. Let us help you find that out.

When we set out to build TrueAccord after a frustrating experience, we spent time thinking about what debt collection should be about. We came up with proactive loss management when we realized that debt collection is much more than strong-arming late customers into paying. It's relationship management for lost relationships, trying to mend lost trust and bringing creditor and debtor back to doing business. This is also why we chose the name "True Accord". As we talked to more and more customers, we realized that getting people to talk was often not the main issue. Getting them to agree on what happened, who owes what and to whom, is the difficult part. Rebuilding trust is about communication, and venting one's frustration about a product or service they weren't happy with is an important step in the process. Through our process, companies discover that talking to defaulted customers is incredibly important: those lost dollars tell you a lot more about your business than you bargained for. For these reasons, we provide a robust dispute resolution process at TrueAccord. Customers can dispute a charge directly from emails we send them, and start a conversation about their debt that may end up with a discount or a cancellation of the balance. Others discover that, unfortunately, they do owe money, and we help them pay it off. It's not a one-size-fits-all process, because no collection process is 100% the same; every customer gets the treatment they need, once they choose to talk to us. It is, however, highly automated, easy to use, and incredibly non-confrontational. Of course the dispute process is sometimes abused. This is where our automated optimization system comes into play, sorting out abusive customers from cooperative ones. If, unfortunately, we see that a customer is abusive, we may end up reporting them to credit bureaus or using any of the other levers we have. Dispute resolution isn't about letting the bad guys win - it's about separating legitimate complaints from abusive deflections and excuses, and rescuing the important relationships that you worked so hard to build. It must be a part of any business's toolbox.

Should you use debt collection to get back at customers? Often, when you're not paid, you feel like you want to get revenge. We get that. When a balance reached debt collection you're usually angry, and may have had a few heated discussion with your late customers. But, wait. The expectation that the Debt Collection Agency be the "bad cop" and harass your customer is exactly what gave the industry its bad reputation, and hurt the reputations of many businesses that use debt collection. It goes against reasonable behavior (yes, granted, so is not paying something you owe). Trying to find a better way is why we started TrueAccord in the first place. What's the alternative? If you're working with us, let's take a deep breath. If your customer is in our system, they'll get messages with all the legally required disclaimers, they will probably get called, they might get reported. Their life is not a picnic. Let's take a minute to think about your goals. First, are you sure you did what you could to retain this customer, and get paid without escalation? Are you sure none of their claims has any merit? Are you willing to lose the customer over a disagreement? Some customers are just irresponsible people. I'll give you that. But many, more than you think, have a reason that they feel is legitimate for not paying. Losing them means losing their future business, and maybe other customers they could bring with them. Understanding them and settling if needed can be more beneficial. This is when our dispute resolution process kicks in. The way we see it, we're more than just the "bad cop". We're your customer retention department, and we want to act in your best interest. Many times your best interest is very different than what you think it is when you submit that debt to us. Should you use debt collection to get back at customers? Definitely not. Using us as your retention department, you should allow yourself to think long term and support your growth whenever possible. Beyond recovering money you're owed, this is the long term added value that TrueAccord can give you.

I'd like to share a disturbing phenomenon we've observed in our data, one that probably impacts many of you who provide services to online businesses. When a new customer is entered into our system, we crawl for additional information about them on the web as well as look for them elsewhere in our system. As we grow and see more companies and the people who owe them money, we start to see chains of debts that are linked to one another. Deeper linking checks revealed that the individuals connected with these debts owned multiple websites, some of them dysfunctional, and often with web hits that indicated some kind of foul play. As we dug deeper, the picture cleared. There is a large number of individuals, operating online, starting and closing businesses in a highly irresponsible manner bordering on fraud. These individuals, by and large (as far as we can see) unrelated to one another, tend to serially open businesses with hardly defensible business models, contract the majority of the work for them to third parties, charge unsuspecting consumers large amount of money, and move on to the next business. We are unable to determine, at this time, whether this is pure fraudulent behavior or just extreme irresponsibility, but the pattern exists. We see it across fashion, insurance, financial planning and several other services. As a business owner, you should be aware of this pattern, especially if you are providing services to online businesses. Design, eCommerce, Hosting and other related services are especially vulnerable since they are key in starting a new online property. TrueAccord customers can ask for access to our Data Furnishing program, that can provide data to help identify these individuals before they are able to do business with you. We recommend that, before you take on new customers for large projects, you run a manual search of their web history, previous businesses, and other owned domains. You may (or may not) be surprised to discover a few of those in your own customer roster. [contextly_auto_sidebar id="e2zVfcB5o56U7AjMGckBxyh1Rn6FEUqh"]

We all want to be paid by our customers as early as possible. While getting invoices out as soon as a job is done and following up to assure payments are two great tips, there actually several design cues that you can include to improve the way your invoice is handled. We're put together a list of the top 3 invoice design tips that get you paid faster. Why Do I Need Invoice Design Tips? Nobody likes paying. We all love buying, but the payment part is the hard part. Because of that, we use any excuse we can to put off, delay or just forget about bills. Correct invoice design and wording leads to lower cognitive load, and to lower objection to paying your bill. After all, you want to be at the top of the pile, where bills get paid. 3 Invoice Design Tips That Get You Paid Faster The following tips are a result of TrueAccord's research into communication language that works when talking to late paying customers. Much like handling excuses, you need to know what to say, to whom, and when. Invoice Design Tip #1: State The Facts The easiest way to undermine the payment process is to dispute the facts: when was a job done, what were the payment terms, what was delivered. It's in your best interest to define the facts and set the stage for the demand for payment. That way, you reinforce the value you provided to your customer, and help them agree with the fact that you need to pay. Include a clear statement of work and the breakdown of all related charges, note when the job was delivered, and refer to your signed contract. Invoice Design Tip #2: Define The Path To Payment Arguing about method of payment is the easiest way to avoid paying. From "the check is in the mail" to "I only pay via bank transfer", customers will have multiple excuses to why they can't pay right here and now. Providing an easy way to pay (via an online form) and a variety of ways to pay (wire transfer, mailed check and so on) will reduce friction and increase your collection rate. Your job is to be able to reply to every "But I prefer..." with a "No problem, here's how you do it. Please pay right now." Invoice Design Tip #3: Instill A Sense Of Urgency It's important to make it clear that you expect action from your customer within a limited time frame. Lack of deadlines and generally laid back language will get your invoice tossed to the end of the line. Use bold colors, explain that the customer is expected to act as soon as possible, and add a concrete time frame ("Please pay or contact us to make a payment within the next seven (7) days, by [Date].") Make sure you are polite but assert the need to act now and make a payment. Add a due date and use contracting colors to highlight important next steps. Bottom Line You want to get paid for work you already did. Too often, business owners neglect this important function only to find that they did all the work but are not getting anything in return for their efforts. Other business owners aren't scammers - like you, they're trying to juggle cash flow and the incoming bills. You need to make sure that you are properly set up to be on top of their mind when they look at that pile.