Transparency – Payment Notices and Door Dash

So, fifteen years ago, I had this crazy idea – showing our work to our clients.
 
One of the earliest innovations our collection agency implemented was sending out an email notice to clients every time we collected a payment.
 
The email included the amount, the payment method, and the name of the collector with their contact information.  We made the work we were doing personal.
 
The reason we did this was over the decades, I’d see clients get their monthly statements and ask ‘what have you done’?  Or spend an hour on the phone with a client explaining why we had collected what we had collected, and why we hadn’t collected  what was still left.  It was clear to me that our industry spends so much time communicating with debtors, we neglect our clients.

 
You’ve Got Mail!
 
By sending payment email notices, we did a few things – we showed them the work started right away, and they would list a number of accounts, and have a payment notice from that batch on Day 1 or Day 2.  It would personalize the process by showing we aren’t just a faceless corporation, that Sarah or Lois collected the payment, and if they had questions they could reach out to them directly.  And lastly, it gave them the rhythm of the work we did for them … a larger client might see somewhere between 5-20 payment notices a day, and they’d see partial payments for $50 or $100, or payments in full for $1618.32.
 
I’ve stood in line at a conference, and a client has come up to me with their phone saying ‘hey, I see you just collected on the X account’.  That’s important.
 
 
Enter Door Dash …
 
Now look at this small niche food delivery company called Door Dash ($13.7 billion dollars revenue last year).  They’ve got this app, and you can order food on it.  But it’s not just about the order, how much it costs, and your food will be delivererd in 25 minutes … it’s doing the same thing.
 
They show their work on their app, the order is received, the food is being prepared, Abid is your delivery driver, and his car is moving along on the app, getting closer and closer.
 
Now you might have ordered food, and it might have said delivery in 25 minutes – but it ends up being 40 minutes, for whatever reason … because they’ve been transparent about the process of getting your food to you.  Crazy notion, eh?
 
 
What We Do Isn’t A Secret
 
By sharing the process of collections, you can be a transparent partner for creditors, not just a greedy black hole that swallows up overdue accounts and occasionally spits out a remit cheque or inventory report. 
 
We’re looking at ways to upgrade our payment notice process – share more information, not less.  And if we get a call from one of our clients, they are invested and excited to know what we are doing, not accusing and resentful we aren’t sharing progress. 
 
And it was 12 lines of code in our collection software that we built.
 
Want to know how to better share what you do with your clients?  Want to know what to ask your current collection agency for to see their work?  Drop me an email at blair@receivableaccounts.com.
 
Cheers,
 
Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data & Credit
226-946-1730