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The Christmas holidays, with New Year’s Eve just around the corner, is a natural time for people everywhere to feel buoyant and happy amid what’s otherwise a dark and cold time of year. To take a word from the holiday jargon, jolly!
Work slows down, and we gather with friends and family to feast, share a drink, and make new life-long memories. In the world of debt collection, things aren’t always this happy. Rightly or wrongly, the sector is associated with the kind of aggressive, hostile language people see in Hollywood movies. Sometimes, real debt collectors use harsh tactics that alienate and irritate debtors, even though they don’t work any more effectively.
Summit A*R is proud to do things differently: our PHD approach stands for Preserve Human Dignity. It’s the right attitude to take heading into Christmas and all year round. Let’s explore a few ways our approach is a difference-maker in the industry.
People Deserve Dignity
Summit A*R makes it a point to be one of the rare friendly debt collectors for many reasons, but perhaps mostly because people deserve respect and dignity. All kinds of ordinary people can get into debt through no fault of their own, having done nothing wrong or even ill-advised.
Some people struggle to pay large medical bills for essential treatments, while others get enticed by targeted advertising and sucked into buying products they don’t need with money they don’t have. Actually, people deserve to be treated kindly, even if the debt is their own fault!
There’s no situation where people don’t deserve dignity. When our specialists speak to debtors, they’re always polite and kind, knowing that they’ll be associated with your business, but they’re also trained in negotiation tactics.
Thankfully, there’s no conflict between kindness and results.
Gets Better Results
Even if you were a business-minded executive concerned only with your bottom line, there’s still no reason to treat people rudely or aggressively. In over 20 years of operating, we’ve proven that you can work with ethical debt collectors and enjoy recouping, on average, nearly double the debts.
You’ve read that correctly! Summit A*R helps get your books healthy again with almost double the success of other companies, all while treating people with the kind of professionalism you want representing your company.
Relying on professional debt collectors frees up personnel in your organization to work where they’re most effective and to do the job they were hired to do. Few companies have in-house debt collectors with our skill sets. If they’ve been assigned that kind of work, they almost certainly don’t have the qualities of an effective debt collector specifically trained for that job.
Better Relationships
Asking anybody for money can be awkward and uncomfortable, and this only gets truer the longer they’ve gone without paying. Any reminder of a balance owing reinforces that they’ve been delinquent so far.
Companies are in a tough position: how can they collect the money they badly need without upsetting clients and customers they’d like to keep doing business with years from now? After all, your advertising budget has worked hard to win you customers, while your staff have developed important business relationships with clients over the years.
Don’t jeopardize or risk the vital connections you’ve made with people.
That’s where Summit Account Resolution fits in, as we walk that delicate tightrope walk for you, getting you safely to the other side while ensuring your vital business relationships remain positive. You’ll appreciate having someone take this invidious and challenging task off your plate, especially when we resolve the problem in less time, more effectively, leaving a better taste in your future partners’ mouths.
Collecting the debt is something you’ll be thankful for today, but protecting your reputation is essential for long-term strategy.
Difficult Collections
It’s easier to be kind and mellow when a collection is easy to obtain. What about the stubborn, difficult collections? It doesn’t matter how challenging or delinquent a collection is — we always use our PHD approach successfully, even in situations when collecting debts is tough.
Commercial collections are very different than collecting dental and medical debts, for example. Yet healthcare professionals, dentists, and administrators have a very busy schedule and don’t have time to chase down old debts.
This dilemma puts them in a bind. Their patients didn’t ask to get sick or have a toothache, yet they need the payments to help keep their business running. Asking them for money when they’re reluctant to pay is uncomfortable and often unproductive.
Our practices are 100% HIPAA compliant, so you won’t have to worry about opening yourself up to fines, lawsuits, or any type of privacy breach. We’ll also use our PHD approach throughout and see the debt collection through to the end, so you don’t have to.
Secure Online Portals
Being nice to people is good for its own sake and it’s a helpful attitude when dealing with customers. It’s also nice to be able to check in on the status of your debt collection.
We provide clients with assigned user IDs and passwords with a secure online client portal accessible 24/7. The portal lets clients place new accounts for collection, view summaries of placements, monthly reports, and remittance reports, and report things like bankruptcies or any direct payments received at the office.
Change the contact information and any other pertinent data whenever you please. The portal provides clients with constant access to collection information even when our business is closed outside of normal business hours.
The Christmas holidays can be a wonderful break, where people spend slow time together and enjoy breaking bread. The table is loaded with food, and the spirits are high! It’s hard to keep the momentum of this type of joy alive throughout the year, but it’s important to remember that just like everybody should have a Merry Christmas, everybody deserves respect and dignity throughout the year. We’ve built it into our professional DNA while managing to outperform our competitors in collecting debts. Hire Summit A*R to enjoy a dignified approach to debt collections this holiday season and beyond.
