Whether it’s an in-house department or a third-party agency, every team needs modern accounts receivable solutions to collect more payments and keep revenue flowing.
Although traditional approaches have worked in the past, technology and changing consumer habits have forced a shift in debt collection practices. It’s time to embrace digital receivable solutions to keep your business moving forward.
What Are Digital Accounts Receivable Solutions?
Digital accounts receivable solutions are your office’s strategies and tools to collect more from consumers faster, with fewer manual steps and more automation.
These receivable solutions should improve operations, increase revenue, and reduce agent workloads.
Digital accounts receivable strategies typically center around email or SMS communications and requests.
Why Update Your Accounts Receivable Strategies?
The way people pay and how they like to be reached is completely different than even a decade ago. The same old tactics are less effective now than ever before.
Over the last several years in accounts receivable, this has resulted in digital receivable solutions as a necessity, not an option.
Digital esignatures, payment requests, and document management streamline AR workflows and encourage customer engagement. This process:
- Creates faster payments: When you reach customers the way they prefer, they respond faster.
- Promotes healthy cash flow: Fast, easy payment options and higher customer engagement numbers create reliable cash flow.
- Reduces manual work: When you automate how you track requests, send reminders, and manage recurring payments, you eliminate repetitive employee tasks.
Here’s a closer look at why these updated strategies are essential.
CHANGING CONSUMER HABITS
Consumer habits are a vital reason to reduce outbound call campaigns and add more email and SMS request workflows and self-serve payment options.
These digital receivable solutions keep you current with channels that simplify consumer connections and increase engagement.
Relying on only phone calls to speak with consumers is not the effective strategy it once was. Why?
- People don’t answer phone calls as often as they used to
- Many business phone numbers are blocked by call-blocking apps or marked as spam
While telephone collections don’t need to be replaced, email and SMS channels are great at reducing outbound efforts in your accounts receivable strategy.
These requests also tend to encourage inbound phone calls, which are more likely to yield customer payments.
If your company spends time and effort to understand consumer habits and the digital customer journey, you’ll gain insight into the most effective channels to use.
Along with communication preferences, you should offer options like self-serve payment portals, flexible payment terms, and multiple payment methods for easier collection processes.
Work from Home Agents
A recent change to office life for many is the shift to remote work. Most agencies have learned that with planning, a remote call center is a sustainable option.
This is where many businesses find that digital accounts receivable strategies help them adapt.
PCI compliance and payment security should be a concern, whether you are remote or on-site. Customer payment details need to be protected, which is hard to control in remote locations.
Using PDCflow’s requests, agents can send an email or SMS link to customers, who can pay while still on the phone. The collectors get a guaranteed payment, and customers feel safer knowing their payment details are secure.
Wider Industry Adoption
Debt collection has been trending toward digital solutions for some time. Many agencies used to worry about email, SMS, and other technologies in the past. However, norms have changed, and digital communication is now commonplace.
For agencies that want to stay relevant and compete in the industry, it’s essential to use digital receivable solutions that make paying fast and easy.
But payments aren’t the only way to use technology in accounts receivable. Many companies have moved to:
- Digital document delivery for notices: There are ways to send a Model Validation Notice or other documents through email and still remain compliant with regulations. Many agencies choose to save money on letter vendors and time on delivery with this method.
- Bulk collection campaigns: When agencies have a large list of contacts, email or SMS bulk requests make it possible to send to thousands of people with a simple spreadsheet upload. These campaigns reduce the need for outbound calls.
- Settlement offers: Agencies that must engage inactive contacts like to use settlement campaigns for high return rates. Some agencies send settlement document and payment request together in bulk for a huge ROI from hard-to reach contacts.
- Gathering esignatures: Companies often need signatures on paperwork in the course of resolving an account. When companies can get a legal esignature and store the record in the same system as payment information, customer experience and record keeping get a lot easier.
Using software like PDCflow lets agencies manage document, signature, and payment workflows all in one place. This consolidates more processes in one place, from setup to collection requests to reporting and reconciliation.
Automating for Efficiency
Software automation is a popular way for companies to make AR billing easy for staff and reduce manual tasks that waste time or cause errors.
In debt collection, automated digital solutions simplify receivables management for your staff, allowing them to help more consumers per day. These automations can include:
- Request tracking: Follow request status via email updates. Know when something was opened, completed, disputed, or failed.
- Auto reminders: Automated reminders have been proven to quadruple request completion rates. Set them up during the initial request and eliminate the need for a human to manually send a reminder about an open request.
- Recurring payments: Every company that offers recurring payments should have a system that runs them each month without intervention. Automated recurring payments save time, reduce errors, and create guranteed revenue for your business each month.
Benefits of Digital Receivable Solutions
Smooth Customer Journey
Email and SMS requests, digital document management, and digital payment tools help your customers.
- They make communication fast and easy.
- They give people choices in the ways they engage and the methods they use to pay.
- Easy, intuitive tools save your customers from interacting with agents.
Faster Training
Any change you make to your processes means you will need to retrain staff. Choosing simple, multi-function software decreases the time it takes to teach your team how to use tools.
Instead, you can focus this time on listening skills training, empathy for consumers, and payment negotiation tactics.
Simplified Compliance
PDCflow for AR Processes
PDCflow’s software comes with a long list of features that help modernize accounts receivable strategies.
Here are some of the most popular features our customers use to increase revenue and reduce manual work.
- Email and SMS delivery: Send requests to a customer’s inbox or mobile number.
- Bulk sends: Send requests to up to 5,000 contacts at once with a simple spreadsheet upload.
- QR codes: Create QR code links, so customers can reach your payment portal in seconds, even from a paper statement.
- Web chat link: Instead of email or text, you can generate a secure link and share directly through your customer chat channel.
- Payment portals: Create secure payment portals and link to them from your corporate website for a self-serve payment option.
- Credit card and ACH: Set up credit card and ACH payment processing, to offer customers a choice of payment method.
- Recurring payment schedules: Set up recurring payments for customers using terms that work for them. Also, allow for self-serve recurring payments via the online payment portal so customers can create a schedule themselves.
- Automated request tracking and reminders: Automate tracking and reminders, so you know the status of a request and customer’s don’t forget to pay.
- Trust accounts: For businesses that handle funds on behalf of a client, set up trust accounts so all the money you collect is handled in a secure, compliant manner.
- Consolidated reporting: Get reporting on all of your requests and transactions, all in one system. See an overview of performance or target one specific transaction’s audit report.
- Administrative controls: Admins can lock down permission access for templates and reporting by group, department, and location. Reduce errors and simplify work for teams by limiting what they can see.
- Compliance: Simplify all kinds of payment and communication compliance, from PCI to HIPAA with secure payments and requests.
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- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
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