What to Do When a Client Just Won't Pay on Time

You're excited to have customers, and when you first start your business, that excitement can take you a long way. However, after a while the excitement tapers off and you work hard at the realities of sustaining that business. You focus on your marketing, hone your product, and make sure that you have exceptional customer service. Then there's a problem: a payment bounces. What can you do? You can use a texting service to make payments simpler. 

The Problem of Missed Payments 

Let's say that you run a local fitness center. You have overhead costs, and these can be substantial. For example, you need to pay for your building, and you must maintain your equipment. You have staff to pay as well, and while some of them might depend on the number of specific clients or courses you have, others are essential to your basic operating. You also need to pay your marketing budget, and you have other consultants such as an accountant. 

What happens when your fitness clients miss a payment? Perhaps they started out at the beginning of the year and were excited about the possibility of joining your gym, but their enthusiasm has waned. As it wanes, so do their payments, and all of those bounced payments cause you trouble as you try to pay your overhead costs. You count on them to make ends meet as a small business owner.

Missed payments also cost you staff time. Instead of marketing to new clients and asking for referrals from satisfied customers, now you're chasing down clients to collect past due payments and clarify whether they want to continue as members. 

Create Payment Reminders with a Texting Service 

What can you do to prevent missed payments? 

Unfortunately, not everyone is diligent about tracking their expenses, or they may have a month when a few expenses hit at once and they forget about their monthly payments that usually come out of their account. What happens then? The check bounces or the credit card is declined. 

Your business can work to prevent this problem. If you use a texting service, you can set up a payment reminder for clients who pay on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. This gives them time to ensure that the funds are in their account.

Send Out Payment Notices with Your Texting Service 

According to Xero, in the field of small business, about 60% of invoices are paid late.

Do you have a group of customers who missed their monthly payments? Get overdue or late payment notices into their hands quickly with a texting service. If you find that your customers often need to update their payment information, Business.com suggests that you "have a merchant services portal that can handle setting up monthly payments." You can link to this within your text message as well if you wish.

Instead of spending a lot of time on the phone, emailing notices that are easy to ignore, or sending out notices through the mail system, get to your clients quickly and easily using a texting service.

At EZ Texting, we're here to support your business development. Whether you're trying out text-based marketing for the first time or you need to set up the infrastructure to stop late payments, we can help. Sign up for free today.