Have you thought about giving the people who are the closest to your customers – and who are invariably great communicators – responsibility for dealing with credit issues?

As a business strategist I advocate your Customer Service people inject their warm personalities into this clinical function at a time when giving your customers the best care and experience has never been so critical.      

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez, the founding Member at Profit Centered Credit Group advocates merging Customer Service into a new function called Customer/Sales Support which handles:

1) Credit Approval

2) Customer Service

3) Completion of The Sale

Good credit managers must be good communicators to deal with all the different aspects of a business including customers and sales. And because they identify and fix things that go wrong, they have an excellent understanding of how things should work.

As an executive coach with a powerful track record of helping businesses to grow in uncertain times I agree with Abe who advises CEOs and business owners that while “risk management” is an important part of the job – it is just part of the job.

Let’s not forget that the primary reason why credit is even extended is to get profitable sales that would otherwise be lost. They should not use Days Sales Outstanding and % bad debt to measure performance because it will adversely influence how the job is approached and will have a negative effect on profitability.

Accounting and Finance would still maintain an oversight responsibility because part of their duties is to safeguard the assets of the business and the Accounts Receivable is often one of, if not the largest, asset.

I’m keen to hear your thoughts on this through the blog. You can mail me richard.bosworth@whatifspecialist.com, follow @richardwhatif on Twitter and find me on LinkedIn under Richard Bosworth.