Collecting Your Money From A Voice Venture

Although you can offer many kinds of voice, fax and email communications services to your customers, you should consider your cash flow and the possibility of losses. This is especially true of mailbox rentals where many of your clients will live in apartments and relocate frequently; sometimes overnight without any prior notice. Fortunately this should be a minor concern because you are only providing a service, your costs would be minimal. 

At first glance, it would appear that a nationwide 900 # is the easiest path to profit because billings are automatically handled and collected by the telephone company. In other words, if the calling client does not pay your bill, they will lose their local telephone service. However, if you read the fine print on using pay-per-call services, there are important issues like charge-backs and the high fee you will pay for this 3-rd party collection service.

Besides startup costs, a 900 service requires you to maintain a significant monthly call volume or you will sacrifice a larger share of the billings. If you are an entrepreneur with a limited advertising budget, a nationwide 900 number is not for you. More on this subject later on.

ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS;  GET INSTANT VERIFICATION, TOO!

Once you determine the business venture you wish to pursue, you can apply to accept and instantly verify credit cards by filling out the application in Appendix E and mailing it back to us. We will forward it to a bank for review. If accepted, you will need to send them an additional fee for further processing. We will then provide you with the software package ($3000.00) which will allow you to charge customers directly via their credit cards and print receipts on your PC.

Credit cards can be used to pay for your services, but most banks will only approve their use for charges if you meet each new client face-to-face to establish that they are the cardholder and get a signature on the draft form. Unfortunately, becoming a Visa-MasterCard merchant is becoming more difficult, and entrepreneurial operations without a commercial address (home based) are often denied. However we have made special arrangements, so make sure you complete the attached form and return it to us. When you are accepted we will contact you with other information.

If you seek to operate your voicemail business in a small community, clients may be able to visit and pay their bills in person. However in the big city, clients will be spread out over large geographic areas. Without that personal face-to-face contact you may suffer some losses over time from clients who skip town or just don't pay their bills promptly.

A personal check is supposed to clear almost overnight, but many banks often miss this target. As a result, a client knowing his personal check will eventually bounce could amass some significant telephone bills in a few days. That is why many voice service providers require that initial payments be made in cash, or delay activating their client's password until the check clears the bank. Subsequent monthly payments are assumed to be good until otherwise. A check guarantee service would help reduce this risk for a small per-check processing fee.

If you sell your voice services to commercial customers like real estate agencies, restaurants, or other establishments, you will probably offer them 30 day billing terms. The risk of loss is relatively low and remember that you are still only marketing space on your hard disk so you have little or no out-of-pocket expenses. This may not be the case if you provide pocket paging (beepers) or telephone call transfers via a Centrex service.

Some VoiceStamp applications will manage your client accounting in real-time and insure that billing is processed and printed on clear invoices for mailing. As with any type of business, some percentage of your accounts receivables will be un-collectable. The best you can do is pre-qualify your customers carefully and weigh the risks, or establish an escrow account to debit the cost of their monthly charges to hedge your losses.

This pay in-advance approach also works very well for per-inquiry services where you dispense information to incoming callers and invoice clients for each call processed. In other words, service fees are only imposed if one of your client's new prospects calls your voice system, making it attractive for entrepreneurs to experiment with your audio text services.