Our Award-Winning Debt Recovery Process

How do debt collection agencies work?

Depending on which debt collection agency you choose, the debt recovery process they adopt can vary greatly.

While some adopt a hard-line approach and believe the legal route represents the best way to secure payment from customers, others prefer a subtler, pre-legal strategy.

At Hilton-Baird, we are very much advocates of the latter approach. We believe that polite and professional mediation offers the greatest chance of bringing a successful conclusion to often complex cases, additionally enabling us to preserve customer relations and not burn any bridges that the legal route often does.

While we use technology and letters to support our pre-legal collection activity, we firmly believe that we are successful because we spend the maximum amount of time contacting your customers by phone.

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Why do we prefer this approach?

The weight that a debt collection agency can bring can often be enough to encourage customers to pay
There could be a number of reasons why payment is being delayed. By getting to understand these, we can work with your customer to deliver a solution that works for all parties and resolve any disputes to unlock payment
We have confidence in our team’s skill and expertise to recover payment due to their proven track record
It gives us the best chance of preserving your customer relations, should they be a valuable customer or you wish to trade with them again in the future
If payment remains unforthcoming, we then have the option of taking legal action, with your permission, for a firmer approach
Businesses rarely respond well to legal action, and even securing a judgment is no guarantee of payment

How do we charge for our service?

We charge our clients a success-based fee, which is based on the age of the invoice when we are instructed and the debtor’s location.

To assist us with our initial debtor status verification process, which involves our team assessing the creditworthiness of your customer and ascertaining whether there are any outstanding County Court Judgments in place, we also charge a small administration fee.

Should legal proceedings be required, we charge on a case-by-case basis that reflects your circumstances and requirements, with all actions and costs agreed with you up front or covered in a service level agreement.

What else should you know about our debt recovery process?

Our debt recovery process has been created and refined based on all our experience, both in terms of the previous cases we have been involved in for our clients and from our team’s past credit control experience.

Using a mixture of phone calls, emails and letters – all with varying levels of impact – we can ensure that the right message is conveyed at the right time to bring the right results for our clients.

And having worked for clients across a wide range of sectors, we are able to tailor our approach accordingly and guide you through the legal process if that’s the route in which you would like to proceed.

To find out more about how we could help, call us on 0800 9774848 or email collections@hiltonbaird.co.uk.