Telephone scripts for credit control

Nobody likes to make telephone calls chasing money, but in today’s economic climate it has to be done. So how can you make sure your calls are professional, effective and help build on the relationship you already have with your customer?

Relationships

To portray a professional image you need to have some control over what is said to customers by your credit controller (CC) in order to get them to pay up.

You can do this by scripting what you want your CC to say. Then get them to practice on you, using a calm professional tone. The key is for them not to get into an argument with customers.

To give your CC examples of what to say use the document Telephone Scripts for Credit Control.

Keeping track

You’ll also want your CC to record when they spoke to the customer, whom they spoke to, what was said, any promises/arrangements that were made to settle etc. and eventually a note of when payment was actually received. Dating each such entry makes it easy to see the timeframes involved when chasing particular customers. Your accounting software might even allow you to keep this detail within the customer record on your sales ledger.