Debt Collection Techniques

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Author: Steve Austin

Article source: http://www.aaadebtmanagement.com/. Used with author's permission.

Here are some sound debt collection techniques that can be followed by businesses to mitigate the bad debt crisis:

Sending a pre-collection letter.
Hiring a collection agency.
Doing it yourself.

Sending A Pre-Collection Letter

Most businesses don't want to "play the bad cop" with their clients, so they approach a collection agency, which for a nominal fee sends a notice to the defaulter asking him or her to pay up.

Remember, a notice from a collection agency is much more effective than the notice from your company itself. It tells the defaulting customer that you have now hired a professional help to collect the dues and, thus, it increases chances of customer paying up the debt faster. The 'fear factor' of credit rating damage is associated with collection agencies.

Hiring a Collection Agency

A collection agency under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is one that recovers debt on behalf of others. It employs various methods to recover dues from errant customers:

Collection calls are a necessity in debt recovery. Handling the collection call in a calm and professional manner can make the difference upon which collections are made or lost.

Skip tracing is a detection method adopted to find a debtor who has absconded either intentionally or unintentionally. Forwarding occurs when a collection agency forwards a debtor's account to another collection agency, possibly because it does not have the authority to conduct business where it is currently located.

Flow Forwarding is a novel concept in which a collection agency contracts with a business to purchase all its bad debts on a periodical basis. Doing It Yourself

As mentioned earlier, most businesses suffer from bad debts because of a lack of a clear debt management policy. Most organizations would minimize their debt management if they had clearly defined credit policies. Moreover, a clear understanding of the law needs to be had before a business drags its clients to court. This is the tedious bit and therefore businesses need to be very sure with their preparation.