Don’t expect anything to go “back to normal” post COVID, and what defines as “post” still remains to be seen. Some experts say that it may be 2022 before we can safely resume old activities in some semblance as they once were. The pandemic has left its mark, not only on our physical behaviors, but our financial ones as well. In these continuing uncertain times, debts rise, layoffs continue, and there is a consistent economic downturn for many businesses. Many entities are overwhelmed with the daily tasks associated with trying to make up for lost time during the shutdown and by trying to throw collection efforts into that mix only makes your employees less productive with other tasks.
Now that we are 3 months into 2021, you may be wondering whether it’s time to hire a professional collection agency. Here are the top reasons why you should:
- Your staff is not equipped to constantly make collection calls. The fact is, making periodic calls on late accounts isn’t enough. You need an agency that works for you day in and day out.
- You do not have debt collection software that will increase productivity in collections. A robust debt collection software is a thing. It really is. It’s not an Excel spreadsheet or Word document that keeps track of call notes. It is technology that facilitates effective collections by combining a host of debt collection methods, not just at the touch of a hand, but constantly working in a virtual environment 24/7.
- You have new customers or patients that are not responding to your first attempts to collect on an account. You do not have any payment history on these debtors that gives you a glimpse of their financial reliability. This is a huge red flag, and if you have an effective agency that can collect in the first 120 days, you’re far more likely to get your money.
- Your debtors are missing payments or refusing to stick to an in-house payment arrangement, or they disappear altogether. When this starts happening, if you don’t have any agency to stay on top of these issues, you can place bets on the likelihood that this debt will be ignored, and again, your office staff is likely not trained in how to tackle this with the best approach. It is much harder for a debtor to ignore a persistent collection agency, and with the ability to utilize skip tracing, competent agencies can locate evasive debtors.
- You have clients that are denying the responsibility for the debt. What happens if they decide to fight you? Do you have strong legal representation to handle litigation on behalf of you? Probably not. You need a team of people that have your back and will work hard to validate the debt and recover your revenue.
- The debtor is making malicious and false claims about you and/or your business. In small businesses, threats from a debtor to try and defame your good reputation are often a tactic used to get you to cease the collection activity. This fear alone will sometimes result in a small business writing off the debt just to avoid the confrontation.
- Your ROI on collection efforts is unbalanced. Despite commission fees, hiring an agency might actually save you money. We mentioned loss of productivity, so what does this equate to financially? Think about what you’re paying your office staff on an hourly or salary basis and ask yourself what they should really be spending that valuable time on. If they’re spinning their wheels trying to do what debt collectors really do best, you’re losing money.
- Reporting a debtor to the credit bureaus. When a collection agency gets involved, the debtor is more apt to pay on an account because a derogatory mark can be placed on their credit profile with the major credit bureaus.
All these reasons back up the truth that you should hire a collection agency in 2021. Now is the time to partner with us to address every one of these facts. Let our collectors with over 70 years of combined experience go to work for you.
Call us today! 423-586-7613
