Credit Cut Off

[tomriver]

How do you folks handle an order being taken by a customer on Credit Hold or is a Bad Customer? We have a technique in place, but I'd like to evaluate it against yours.

If a customer calls in and is on Credit Cut Off, it doesnt neccesarily mean that the order will not process; it means Accounting wants to review the Order & History first. Therefore, we do not mention it to the customer, and if later there is a problem then Accounting calls the customer back.

If the Customer is catagorized as Bad Customer, being their credit terms with us have been denied, we handle that differently.
If the customer is on the phone, we tell them we can only take a Credit Card order. If the order was Faxed or Mailed, I have it given to me (it is NOT entered into the system) and I call the customer to make them aware of their situation.

VP of MIS seems to think that Bad Customer orders shoul dstill be entered...but I dont see the point in wasting TSR's time with an order that has a bad chance of shipping.

Any opinions?

[Claudia63]

I believe you need to study how your system is set up with your IS or Info system department.

We have a system that when a rep enters a phone order and the credit card or whatever form of payment, is no good, it notifies the rep to ask for another form of payment.
If the guest insists on letting the order go on hold, the rep has the ability to allow the order to process, even though it will go on a hold.

The IS system holds the order for 7 days, if the guest does not call back or respond to an email in those 7 days, the order is cancelled, but retained in the system.

This allows other reps to easily find guest's orders without the rigamaroll of trying to re-decipher the order again for the guest.

I suggest you have the orders enterred and determine if you non-phone reps should even respond to the "invalid" credit card cut off, or perhaps, enter the orders and just keep processing. Our paper processing reps keep on enterring and allow the Accounting department to sort through the credit cut off customers.

We do this and allow the Order management team/Accounting team to sift through these orders and call the guest's who do not have "fraud holds" already on their accounts, or email the guest's who do not have phone numbers.

It is very good for increasing productivity via the data entry and it allows to see from a business prospective, how many customers are indeed legitmate as opposed to those with credit problems.
You can't run a report if the papers are sitting on your desk.
It gives you a visual aid, but it does not allow for easy analysis of why the orders are on hold.

That's my two cents.