| |
| |
|
Customer Service Information |
|
|
|
Minimize The Pain of Check Recovery
$350 million in bad checks are written each and every week. That fact alone makes bad checks a serious problem for American businesses. It is almost inevitable that, if your business accepts checks, you have been affected by this. As well as being stuck with bank fees for depositing a bad check - and the very real possibility that the bad check could impact your bottom line - there is the time, aggravation and cost associated with recovering the funds. It is often the case that recovering the check can incur more in costs than the value of the original debt. Inevitably, many smaller businesses write off bad checks, believing that they cannot afford to pursue the debt. However, there are a number of ways your business can fight back and minimize the pain of bad check recovery. IT'S AN INNOCENT MISTAKE... For small and mid-sized businesses, the first recourse is to call the customer and explain the problem. Don't immediately assume that the customer intended to defraud your business. It is often true that an innocent mistake has been made and a calm, reasoned telephone call will recover your funds and keep what may be a valuable customer. Please be aware that threatening a debtor with publicizing their name or notifying their employer is illegal, so speak only to the person owing the funds and stay cool ! PURSUING THE DEBT In most States, you are required to send a certified letter to the check writer before you can institute court proceedings. You may request that the debtor also repays the bad check fee you have incurred. The check writer is usually required respond within 10 or 30 days. This varies by state, so please check with your State Attorney General's office. Again, a calm and reasonable tone often works well and will ensure you stay within the law. Reviewing the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ( http://www.fair-debt-collection.com/fair-debt-act.html ) before you draft your letter or make a call is highly recommended. While these two methods are time and cost-effective, if you have still been unable to recover the check the obvious next step is to institute court proceedings or hire a professional debt collection agency. However, these are time consuming and potentially expensive options and - for many small businesses - may mean that the cost outweighs the benefit. Nevertheless, there are alternative check recovery methods that don't have these possible downsides. CHECK ENFORCEMENT UNITS Some areas now have a check enforcement or check recovery unit that is part of the state or district attorney's office. These are not available in every state and the services provided do vary. In general, though, the check enforcement unit will investigate and prosecute the debtor on your behalf and you will receive the full face value of the check. Contact your local District Attorney's office to see if this service is offered in your area. ELECTRONIC CHECK RECOVERY A better all round option is to consider using one of the electronic check recovery services now available. There are many advantages to electronic check collection over traditional recovery methods, not least the fact that many of the companies offering this service charge no fees to your company. Other benefits include: i) Increased Recovery Rates : The National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA) reports increases in recovery rates by as much as 50% in comparison with traditional recovery methods. ii) Low Recovery Costs: No bank fees for redepositing an NSF check electronically. iii) Benefits to Customers: No need for customers to receive collection letters and calls or supply a money order or cashier's check. iv) Fast Recovery Times: Traditional recovery methods can take between 30 and 60 days. On average, electronic check recovery takes 7 days, after which time the recovered check is deposited into the merchant's account. v) Out of town checks are handled as quickly and easily as local checks. While bad checks are a fact of business life, recovering funds owed to you is not the herculean task it might first appear. You can fight back and still avoid many of the headaches that have been traditionally associated with pursuing a debt. Jason Schwartz is CEO of Creative CashFlow Solutions, a check processing company established in 1998. Learn more about their free electronic check recovery service here: http://www.ilovechecks.com/recovery/
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Call Center Software - Your Tool of Choice in Customer Relations The call center represents your first line of communication with customers and potential customers. Whether you choose to outsource this service or to establish an in-company call center, this is one area in which quality is paramount and cannot be compromised. One of the Secrets of a Great Customer Experience A few weeks ago we conducted our annual "Customer Experience Study Tour" in London England. This is where we take delegates to visit a number of leading Customer Experience companies for a behind-the-scenes look at how they approach the task of building a great Customer Experience. Basic Levels of Consumer Integrity that Presently Permeates Society Reality is not always pretty. But here is a tad bit of it for you today. Who Says the Customer is Always Right? We all know the old adage, "The Customer is Always Right." If you are an online business owner or offline for that matter, you are on both sides of the subject almost everyday. What Exactly is Customer Relationship Management? The defintion of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that I favor is "CRM is the business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate, manage and personalize the needs of an organization's current and potential customers"From this we can learn that CRM is more than just a piece of software; CRM is a business strategy, one that puts the customer at the heart of the business."That's nothing new" I hear you say, and you would be right. Handling Customer Complaints Even the best business will receive an occasional customer complaint. Knowing how to resolve these complaints will help you gain loyal customers who will then refer others to your business. Call Center Services - An Ever Increasing Demand Are your company's call center services all that they could be? Even centers that were state of the art a decade or so ago might be out of date and inadequate today. As technology expands, so do clients' expectations regarding communication. How to Retain Your Customers the Dish Network Way Customer retention is vital to a business. If you cannot retain your customers you will be continually losing current customers and always on the search for new ones. Customer Service Tips - Is Your Business A Leaky Bucket? Customer service and customer service training are vital for any business.But, is your business a leaky bucket?This is a question I always ask small business owners who attend my marketing seminars. What Do They Want Anyway? You want customers. I want customers. Reducing Customer Resistance to Your Product or Service Resistance has to do with putting up blocks that prevent us from doing, being, or accomplishing what we want for our business. There are many reasons for feeling resistance including fear of new things or change, fear of failure or success or even fear of not being perfect. How Do You Create Customer Loyalty? Another sad fact of life is that these days, very few customers are loyal. Most of their loyalties lie with their bank accounts, and you can't blame people for watching their shrinking dollars. Stay - Say - Pay Would you like to have customers that stay with you anddon't buy from your competitors?Customers that say nice things about your business to otherpeople; pay you on time and accept the fact that you might be a bit more expensive thenother suppliers?Of course you do but how do we perform this miracle? It'sdead easy really; you only have to consider two factors: be Reliable and be Likeable.It almost goes without saying that it's vital to have areliable product or service. First Contact: The Source of Customer Loyalty With customers being smarter, more cost conscious, more product knowledgeable and more demanding, improving customer service has become a major focus within many businesses. In Customer Satisfaction is Worthless; Customer Loyalty is Priceless, author Jeffrey Gitomer contends the real solution is shifting the paradigm away from customer service to customer loyalty. Empowering Customer Service Vital It never fails to amaze me how many companies have employees who are empowered to offer former customers wonderful incentives to lure them back, yet their customer service representatives have the ability to offer virtually nothing to convince an unhappy customer to stay.Powerless, these CSRs often actually ignore customers' requests and declarations of their intent to leave, even encouraging them to seek out another company!They often repeat the few phrases they're allowed to say over and over again, further infuriating the customers. Complaining Consumers The salesman's job is to be well informed; extremely well informed. For this information is how he earns his bread. Sales Marketing: 10 High Impact Ways To Improve Your Customer Service If you want to last a long time in business and succeed, you must learn how to make your customers happy.You have to know who are your customers, what they want and keep in touch with them and their needs. Make Your Customer Your Friend The simplest way to describe a 'durian' (pronounced doo-ree-ann) is to say it's a yellowish-green fruit about the size of an mid-sized watermelon. It has a thick skin of spikes, and a rich bitterish-sweet fruit. Are You Putting Technology Before Your Customers? Which is more important the technology or the customer?The one thing about the online world you can be sure of is change.It seems like every day there is a new technology being addedwhich will make the internet more accessible. The Drawback of Hacking Off a Blogger Through Weak Process Gaps and Pathetic Customer Service With all of the recent data theft in the financial sector, it is important to make sure that we don't go crazy trying to protect ourselves from risk. Risk management does have a value but this value lies mostly on the front end.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2007 |
