|
|
| Customer Service Information |
|
|
|
|
Free Ideas & Best Practices Featuring: 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:
Customer-Service - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
The Marvelous World of Metaphors Recognize metaphors from every angle and round up more insight into your own innovation. Nobody can do it better than you can! Customer Service, the Internets Primary Neglected Business Concern Customer service is everything to a business. Just look at big, successful retail chains: They let you return perfectly good merchandise just because you changed your mind. Is that insane? Yes, pretty much, but it's also good customer service, and it's a good investment, and the "secret" of success, for a lot of big companies. Client Appreciation - It Means Everything! Want to know the secret for keeping your clients forever? And what if you could keep your revenue growing by 25 percent every year, because your clients loved the way you appreciated them? In this article, you will learn how easy it is to develop a powerful client appreciation program. Once in place, an appreciation program will forever change the way you operate and manage your business. The death of customer servie The other day a reporter call to interview me on the "Death of Customer Service". My first reaction was to deny that charge and claim that customer service is very much alive and well. But upon further thought of the service I've received over the past few months and what others have related to me about their experiences, I had to admit that the quality and level of service has decreased. Upon further thought I realized that it has been on a decline for quite a while. We Got It Wrong: Never Under Promise & Over Deliver You know how it is, you believe something for so long, everyone agrees with you, all the books tell you it's true and then suddenly you have a blinding revelation - we've all been duped! You know like my gorilla mates were? (If you're not sure about my gorilla mates then you really need to read the book - we've got a great offer on at the moment!) Developing A Customer Complaint System Background The company was experiencing an increase in the number of customer complaints and an increase in the cost of processing them and we were hired to analyze the current situation and develop recommendations to increase the effectiveness of the process of administering and resolving the complaints. Modern Call Center Solutions - Keeping in Touch is the Key Call center solutions solve a range of age-old problems. As far back as ancient times, the success of a business has always depended on how well that business can communicate with clients and meet their needs. It is necessary to be available, in touch, easy to reach, and pleasant to deal with. From the point of view of the customer who needs to purchase a product, or is having trouble with a product or service he has already purchased, help must be readily available. From the point of view of a business competing within a certain market or industry, it is necessary to be recognized, and to constantly maintain or increase one's market share. At the bottom of all these needs is communication, and that is exactly what the call center is there to provide. The 7 Principles of Business Integrity If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. -- Alan K. Simpson Customer Service - How Good Are YOU? At 8.30 am a wealthy client (on his way to make a presentation to the local council at 9 am) walked into a store that sells photocopiers. They also provide a copy service. He wanted to make a back-up copy of his lengthy presentation. Dont Work with Jerks: How to Recognize a Difficult Client Early Five minutes into the call I knew this client was going to make my life miserable. The problem was, I already said "Yes." Courting Customers - From First Date to Marriage Landing a new client is like courting a potential spouse. The first date is usually a make or break situation and if the door is still open, the work has just begun. Like dating, you'd better give your prospect a pretty good reason to meet with you again, because there is usually more than one suitor. What Every Manager Should Know About How to Prevent Customer Service Conflicts There are five techniques that have been proven to be effective in resolving, minimizing, and preventing conflicts. And by conflicts I am referring to any of the following that may take place between two or more people: misunderstanding, miscommunications, arguments, disagreements, mixed messages, fighting, etc. My Child Has Opie Eye! 7:00 a.m., the silence in the house is broken by my child's call to me, from another room, "Mom, please take care of my Opie eye!" Customer Service: Stop Sabotaging Your Customer Relationships If you've called for customer service recently you're familiar with this recorded message "This call may be recorded or monitored for quality purposes." I immediately think to myself, "Oh great, here comes the game of 20 questions." Cultivating the Trust Factor In today's highly competitive economy, it is difficult to maintain a significant market advantage based on your professional skills alone. Developing a trusting relationship with your clients is key to your success. No matter what business you are in, the most powerful value-added you can contribute in any business relationship is the trust factor. The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1990's with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer bases. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons. First among these was that it was simply so difficult and expensive to track and keep the high volume of records needed accurately and constantly update them. Communicating Value Abstract: People buy for their reasons, not yours. This article covers the key elements that prospects want to hear you talk about. Cheap To Keep You've heard it all before when it comes to stats about customer retention. Acquiring a customer costs five to 10 times more than retaining one. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67 percent more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred as many as seven other people. Customer Service: Why Bears Make Bad Customers Every business owner should have a picture of his or her ideal customer. When I picture my ideal customer, I see a business owner struggling to find time for all that needs to be done, someone passionate about what they do, someone striving to find answers to make their business run better. By picturing this person in my mind, I am able to develop products and services that I know will benefit that customer. But what happens when a not-so-ideal customer enters the mix? Five Tips to Calm Cranky Customers 1. Tis the Season
|
| home | site map |
| © 2005 |
