It’s no secret that United Kingdom has a poor payment culture. 62% of small businesses have been subject to late or frozen payments in the wake of COVID-19, according to a report published by the FSB.
A commercial debt recovery agency specializes in securing payment of overdue invoices, helping you to avoid bad debt. There are various benefits that come with a specialist Debt Collection Agency such as Ko-bolt, but today, we are going to talk about our process. This article aims to give you an overview of how our commercial debt recovery service works.
Understanding the commercial debt recovery process
Prevention beats cure. It’s important to look out for signs of fraud, financial hardship and poor payment performance. However, sometimes a debt collection service will be necessary for you to secure payment of invoices.
Before using the services of a debt collection agency, it’s best practice to follow a credit control process which has a variety of steps. Not only will this reduce your chances of needing the services of a debt collection agency, but it will also increase their chances of successful resolution without the need for costly, stressful and time-consuming legal action.
An example process is set out below:
When is it time to involve a commercial debt recovery agency?
If you’re faced with a lack of contact, broken promises or spurious disputes, it’s time to involve an agency to escalate the situation and secure payment.
Ko-bolt is a specialist commercial debt collection agency which respects the values and relationships of its clients throughout every stage of the debt collection process. We strive towards an amicable, consumer approach to a commercial problem. These values have led us to develop a 90%+ success rate (based on solvent debt).
Our simple and innovative collection strategy as follows:
Notification
Before we can start work, we need to know more about you and your customer. Our online registration process is simple and available 24/7. What’s more, as soon as you have registered, you can begin using Ko-bolt immediately. Our online debt placement tool is equally simple and all we require in addition are copy invoices and/or a statement of account, all of which can be uploaded directly on the debt placement tool.
You can place a debt: Click Here
Engagement
Within 24 hours of placement, we will get to work recovering your debt. Where possible, email is our preferred method of contact. Not only is this instant, but our advanced email tracking software allows us to see when your customer has received and opened the email, and more importantly, how many times. Our experience has taught us that there are 2 types of debtors: can’t pay and won’t pay. The can’t pay customers will open the email an average of 7 times before we pick up the phone, the won’t pays will either delete the email after previewing it or view it once. Each requires a different approach when we speak to them.
With the won’t pay customers, a more assertive approach is required. We impress upon them the seriousness of the matter and the result if they continue to delay payment, ultimately legal action. This is designed to ‘shock’ the customer into paying and by providing the full picture, they know the consequences of persistent delay from the outset.
Can’t pay customers require a more sensitive approach. Our job is to secure payment, but not at the cost of damaging the relationship or sending them further into stress and despair. We work with your customer to understand what has led to this situation and then offer solutions to help them to get back on-track.
In either case, we focus on swift resolution, without the need for legal action, working with the customer to secure payment quickly while safeguarding the trading relationship.
Working with you
You are our client and you deserve to know what we’re doing to collect your debt. Rather than provide faceless updates via email or wasting time telling you that we haven’t had a successful response, we put our efforts into providing solutions and we proactively inform you by phone when we have achieved our objective, which could be:
- Payment in full
- Promise of payment
- Payment by instalments
However, we actively encourage our clients to contact us by phone if they require more frequent updates.
The outcome will vary depending on the size of your business and your customer, the economic climate and their other financial commitments. Often, a payment plan may be the best solution to ensure your cash flow and your relationship remain intact.
Paying you
And finally, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Most debt collection agencies pay cleared funds once a month or at best, once a fortnight. At Ko-bolt we pay once a week and we’re working on new processes which will allow us to pay you within 24 hours of receipt of cleared funds.
Conclusion
Everybody knows what a nuisance late payment can be. It disrupts cash flow, stifles growth and can be a significant drain on resources. We’re leading the way in simplifying the process, delivering swift results and paying you your money quickly. To discover more about how you can enhance your credit control process and improve your cashflow, our eBook, “Switch On Your Cash Flow”, provides a wealth of information on the subject and can be obtained for free. Simply register with Ko-bolt to get your copy.
Do you have a late payment? Is it clogging up your cash flow? Do you worry about it becoming a bad debt? We can help. Visit www.ko-bolt.com to sign up for free and switch on your cash flow.
