Do you have a dental care establishment that you are devoted to? Do you feel disheartened when customers fail to pay you for your services? It is understandable and this highlights the necessity for Professional Dental Debt Collection.

When you put your time and effort into something, you expect it to pay off. All those hours and money spent designing promotions to acquire patients and all your efforts in giving them the best service may seem wasted if they don’t pay you back. You could be getting tons of business on a daily basis yet losing money if you don’t put effective debt recovery measures in place.

What to Do

If you are having trouble collecting debts, consider the following practices to urge your patients to settle their debt:

When patients go over the due date, call them up and leave a gentle reminder that they need to clear the debt at their earliest possible convenience. Do this for three weeks, each time with an increasingly urgent tone. It has been noted that customers respond better to mobile phone calls than they do to landline.

If the calls do not render positive results, send the patients a formal email in the fourth week. Remind them of their obligation to pay and emphasize the importance of doing so. Do this for another two weeks, each time with an increasingly urgent tone to indicate the escalation.

The final step of the escalation should be a formal letter mailed to the patient’s home address. Once again, remind the patients of their legal obligation to pay. Express that this is causing an inconvenience to your business.

Most people simply forget to pay and don’t intend to be a nuisance, so the chances are that they will clear their dues without you having to go through the entirety of the process.

What Not to Do

Businesses walk a thin line between debt recovery and consumer rights in the UK and most countries. An annoyed customer could do more than just leave a scathing review online; they could even pursue legal action.

One customer’s bad experience can not only ruin the dentist/patient relationship, but it can also ruin the image of your dental practice. Pile a lawsuit on top and you have a disaster of magnanimous proportions to deal with.

For instance, the urgent tone we advised you should have in your correspondences should not come off as rudeness. Following are some other practices that you should avoid:

Do not call more than one time during a week.

Calls regarding debt collection should not be placed before 8 am and after 9 pm.

If the patient has requested that their work location should not be called, strictly comply with the request.

Do not disclose the patient’s debt status to unconcerned third parties.

Conclusion

Debt collection requires a lot of care, and it is often possible to get carried away and behave in a way that will harm your business’s reputation.

Availing the services of a dental debt collection agency will ensure that you get your effort’s worth. A good debt collection agency has experience in influencing people to pay up. In the UK, the leading Dental Debt Collection Agency for dentists is Frontline Collections.

Using a specialist Professional Debt Collection Agency is the only option. They will minimise the counter productivity of chasing unpaid dental fees. They will also understand that the slightest misfire on their part could have lasting repercussions for your business.