The customer who ignores the first reminder

The scenario

The invoice fell due last week. A day or two after, you sent your standard reminder email — short, friendly, the invoice attached, a line asking them to let you know if anything was unclear. It is now seven days later and there has been no reply, no payment, and no acknowledgement. The account is small enough that it has not triggered any alarm, but old enough that it is starting to nag at you. You are unsure whether to wait, send the same email again, or pick up the phone.

What's really going on

In the great majority of cases, silence after a first reminder means the email was simply not actioned — it landed in a shared inbox, sat behind a hundred others, or reached someone who is not the person who approves payments. It rarely means the customer has decided not to pay. People who intend to dispute an invoice usually say so quickly; people who intend to dodge it tend to go quiet much later, after several contacts. At this stage the most likely truth is the dullest one: your message has not yet reached the right desk. Treating early silence as a personal slight leads to a sharper tone than the situation warrants, which can sour a relationship over what was only an oversight.

Your options

You have three realistic moves:

• Resend the same email. Cheap, but if it failed once it may fail the same way again — a second identical message to a clogged inbox often achieves nothing.
• Change the channel. A short phone call cuts through where email did not, and lets you confirm you even have the right contact.
• Send a firmer written note. A brief, more direct email that references the first reminder and asks for a payment date by a stated day keeps a paper trail.

The strongest approach usually combines a channel change with a clear deadline, so the customer both hears from you and has something in writing to act on.

Recommended approach

Pick up the phone. A calm, factual call — I'm following up invoice 1043, due last Tuesday; I sent a reminder but wanted to check it reached the right person — does three things a second email cannot: it confirms the contact, it surfaces any quiet dispute, and it asks for a payment date from a named person. Close by restating what was agreed and send a one-line written confirmation the same day, so the promise is logged. If you genuinely cannot reach them by phone, send a short, slightly firmer email that names the original reminder and asks for payment or a reply by a specific date. For the mechanics of that follow-up note, see the Academy library.

What to avoid

Do not let the account drift while you wait for the customer to come back to you — early arrears are easiest to collect, and every quiet week lowers the odds. Equally, do not jump straight to threats over one unanswered email; a letter of demand at day seven for a small invoice reads as disproportionate and damages goodwill you may never recover. And do not simply resend the same message on a loop, hoping repetition will work where it already failed once.