Really intrigued by this one. I would go further and say disaster relief in general, as living in Puerto Rico showed me how ill-equipped we are to deal with finding the status of people with no communications, and getting aid to the right places.
re: debt collection: just my experience in several small/startup companies... Sending your biggest (only) customer to a debt collector, no matter how gentle, might be counterproductive.
We often get a PO from a reputable, but disorganized or bureaucratic BigCo. We want that to be a good relationship, and we want more business from BigCo. We want positive reviews and testimonials from them. BigCo. is good for the money...eventually... but like any BigCo. they have all the leverage and for many reasons can delay payment until it is convenient for them. Meanwhile we need to pay bills.
As such, a gentler debt collector is not really what we want since the person we would nag (however gently) would likely be the person who needs to green light future projects and be a champion in future discussions throughout BigCo.
What we typically do in the worst case is tell them that it's been great working with you, but we have employees and bills to pay, so if the invoice isn't paid, unfortunately we will have to disable their account in X days. 99% of the time we get paid the next day. The 1% we had to disable were likely never going to be good customers so I am glad we fired them.
Granted, this only works in a SaaS like scenario, not in cases where the work is one-time and handed over to the customer. In those cases, I would recommend requiring pre-payment, at least partial pre-payment. I often pay programmers on fixed bid projects 33% up front, 33% on release for acceptance testing, and 33% when final bugs are fixed. We both take risks, but if we have both done due diligence, then there's rarely a problem.
A smart contract that auto-pays upon (phased) delivery, etc. could be useful, and remove a lot of hassle/anxiety.
From what I've seen, can't that be done "out of the box" today with an ethereum contract?
> A smart contract that auto-pays upon (phased) delivery, etc.
That's a solid idea in theory. We tried something similar but had a tough time getting companies to be comfortable with the autopay feature (e.g. like your comcast or cell phone bill) because most people think that the role of accounts payable is to pay as slowly as possible without pissing off your vendors. That means that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but to nag politely is a nuanced art. The folks who do it the best manage the relationships with the people that actually cut the checks super carefully. They view it as the last step in their customer engagement cycle. Happy to chat more about what we've learned or how we're approaching this: carlos[at]tesorio.com
Totally agree that AP is designed as interest free financing in most companies, large and small. Though I don't know if a squeaky wheel solves that, even with AI or social engineering, etc., precisely because delay is explicitly incentivized.
I concede that you are in the "squeaky wheel" business, so you probably have data showing me it does solve that!
But I would argue in some/many cases, not your cases naturally, I think the squeaky wheel is a counterproductive social norm that actually signals I am OK not being paid. It tells the deadbeat customer, that 1) you haven't gone out of business yet so they can still delay and 2) when things get serious you will not be so subtle, and will start threatening real punitive action. Until then continue delaying.
That's why most companies insulate the AR from the actual people involved in negotiations and selling. You can always blame those "people in accounting" and over drinks promise to "look into it" when all the while you are telling that poor chap in accounting to sit on the invoice. Bad form I know, but happens all the time.
I agree that if you have a special "insider" relationship curated with the 1 person in accounting that cuts the checks, you can sometimes circumvent the accidental delays.
No one ever got a larger bonus for showing FASTER cash outflows in a given quarter. So as long as that is true, line managers with PO authority will not be squeaked into submission.
I think the trick to getting companies comfortable with "smart"-er autopay is to show them a compelling reason why it works for them on the other side of the equation. But since you are actually out there working hard in this space I'll definitely defer to your experience. Maybe it is impossible, at least in the short term. Being married to a PhD in psych, I know that changing human behavior is SUPER DUPER HARD...of course she'd say the same about my domestic behavior ;)
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/kinder-gentler-debt-collec...
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Really intrigued by this one. I would go further and say disaster relief in general, as living in Puerto Rico showed me how ill-equipped we are to deal with finding the status of people with no communications, and getting aid to the right places.