Working for a national paint retail company, this Area Supervisor of Financial Services oversees a team of 14 collectors responsible for securing contractor payments and maintaining a low Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) number. Building strong customer relationships and working most efficiently is critical to her team's success — as is combatting the increasing threat of check fraud. Here she shares how working with BillGO Exchange is a win-win-win for her and her customers.
“One of the No. 1 benefits of BillGO is protecting us against check fraud. We have checks stolen all the time — whitewashed, greenwashed, they are professionally altered. When it comes to the security of BillGO, I don't see any better method. Compared to other vendors, BillGO is by far the easiest — and the most secure. Even if you leave the screen up too long, BillGO closes it and hides the credit card number. It's an additional built-in piece of security.”
What is your primary job responsibility?
With our contractor accounts, there are no late fees and no interest. For instance, there is no credit card that's going to be charged to them. However, when a contractor has a balance, it's going to impact their purchase ability.
My job is to make sure our collectors are kind and courteous when asking for payments and securing those payments on a good faith arrangement. So how a collector interacts with a contractor in those calls is critical. Building that customer relationship — that is what we want to see.
What do you like most about your job?
I've been doing this for 15 years and I've met some really great customers. I know about their lives, their wives, husbands, kids, grandbabies. To me that's important, the quality of the customer relationships. I think our best customers will share that [national paint retail chain] has a great crew.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face when trying to do your job successfully?
Getting a hold of a customer from the collections side. A lot of times people ghost us if they know who is calling.
Doing this kind of job, you either love it or hate it. When you're calling for money, you have to be comfortable with the process. When hiring, I hope to find people that love what they're doing and that are very pleasant.
How much time do you spend collecting payments?
My collectors reach out to our contractors and say, "Hey, I see you pay online. Can you send your payment my way?" They are looking at collecting balances all day.
I personally oversee all virtual card payments. Our BillGO payments filter in through a designated email account, which I share with two others. We do this to ensure we have coverage if one of us is out sick or leaves the company. BillGO Exchange helped us set this up.
Yesterday, I had 25 payments from BillGO. I simply logged in to the BillGO Exchange portal and there were 25 payments all listed on the righthand side. I clicked on each, went into the accounts, put the payments in, ran the payments and immediately got notified that they were authorized. I can literally see the progress as I complete a payment. It's very easy for me to tell you today that any payment you send me today is processed.
I also see new payments come in every day. Yesterday I noted 3 new accounts through the BillGO Exchange.
What do you like most about BillGO Exchange?
The portal is very user-friendly, especially for what I do. When I log in and click on my inbox, right now I have 20 different emails from different vendors. I can go in and look at a BillGO email, open it up, then I log in and all the BillGO payments appear.
The portal navigates through all payments very easily. With other vendors I use, you have to do this, you have to do that. The BillGO Exchange portal is a win-win for the customer and for the person on the other end to get the virtual card. The average customer sends us nine payments a day. Right now, I have 23 cards expiring soon. I click on the login button, put in my credentials and password, and once I'm in I can easily see how many payments I have to run today.
It's so easy to process payments. I have a payment for $7.12 and one for $2,700.00 — and there's no difference for me to click through and process.
What impact does BillGO have on your business?
One of the No. 1 benefits of BillGO is protecting us against check fraud. We have checks stolen all the time — whitewashed, greenwashed, they are professionally altered. I can tell you for a fact, there was a lady I kept calling for a past due balance. She got back to me and said she paid the bill two months ago and that we cashed it. She went back to her bank they said the check was made out to our business and endorsed by our business and hand-deposited into an account in Virginia. They figured out that mail was getting intercepted from her bank's processing center in Richmond.
When it comes to the security of BillGO, I don't see any better method. We have paper checks stolen all the time. Compared to other vendors, BillGO is by far the easiest — and the most secure. Even if you leave the screen up too long, BillGO closes it and hides the credit card number. It's an additional built-in piece of security.
Would you recommend BillGO to another business?
For sure! With another vendor, I have to log in, then re-enter a password, re-enter a part of a credit card number on file, get an email with last four digits, then login with credentials... with BillGO, it's nothing like that. I can log in to their secure website and view all payments in front of me. It tells me when payments are authorized and completed and covers all bases for all customers at one time.
