Many businesses undervalue the negative effects a subpar accounts receivable procedure might ultimately have on customer satisfaction.
In fact, according to Emplifi, 86% of customers will abandon a brand they trusted after just two bad customer experiences. Hence, even though they may be addicted to your brand, it only takes a few annoyances for them to break their addiction permanently.
"I thought I paid this invoice already. Could you recheck?
"Well, I must have forgotten to pay the bill. Can you send it once more?
Then how can I make a payment if I never received the invoice?
Do any of these queries ring a bell?
If so, it may be time to seriously overhaul your accounts receivables process so you can provide the finest client experience and increase retention.
Here are 4 ways you can improve your AR procedure:
1. A single trustworthy source
To simplify their end-to-end revenue management process, some businesses use up to four separate platforms. Customer data inconsistencies between platforms are therefore likely to occur.
Errors in a customer's invoice can indicate that the company is not paying attention to their needs, in addition to being frustrating for the consumer. Customers can also relocate and change their purchasing habits over time, thus any systems and processes used must be adaptable to keep up with these changes in real time.
Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to integrate their customer data collection across platforms and to keep accurate records of their customers' preferences for goods and services, payment terms, locations, key contacts for invoicing, preferred payment methods, and any prior interactions with service or support. A streamlined approach must also be in place so that customers may easily update their accounts as needed if their circumstances change. This is where a customer self-serve portal can be a useful tool to guarantee that the consumer has autonomy to maintain control over their data.
2. Identify and categorise your audience
While it may appear that mailing an invoice is just a highly smart way for a company to make sure that money is collected, it is much more than that. It provides an additional channel for interaction and a chance for your clients to sense their value and individualised treatment.
Each consumer can have a completely distinct payment behaviour depending on their location, the types of goods and services they've used, the size of their company, their industry, and even their credit risk. Hence, you can make sure they are invoiced at a moment when they are most likely engaged and prepared to take action on payment by recognising the subtleties in their profile and segmenting consumers based on these qualities.
Thus, it's essential that you have a billing and invoicing system in place that can support improved customization and specific billing cycles for each client. Even the billing model might be modified to be standard, flex, on-demand, or order-based as part of this modification.
3. Establish excellent payment recognition workflows.
Nothing is more annoying than getting a payment reminder after an invoice has already been paid. Nevertheless, if the proper routines aren't in place to recognise income in real-time and update a customer's billing account, this can happen far too frequently.
Additionally, the billing platform itself may be providing false information regarding unpaid invoices in the absence of robust accounts receivables reporting capabilities that are updated in real time.
Thankfully, businesses can quickly set up workflows to ensure that when a payment is made, the payment is appropriately logged against that customer's account by utilising a billing platform with Open APIs that can interact with payment systems and banking providers.
4. Approach non-payments head-on.
No company or client is safe from missed payments. Most of the time, they are the result of unanticipated network outages, expired credit cards, inadequate funds, or direct client problems with their financial providers.
Automated retries and generic dunning emails may appear to be a quick remedy, but they can quickly turn into unsatisfactory customer experiences.
Building a communication flow that gives your consumer the impression that they are speaking with a helpful member of your support team on an individual basis is crucial. To do this, you must explain why the payment might have failed and suggest practical next steps for resolving it. You can offer advice on how they might avoid the problem if it was their fault. Alternately, if it was a problem on your end, you might apologise and assure them that the problem will be resolved.
Being completely open and honest in communication helps to increase trust and adherence. You can quickly build up these automated email templates that are tailored based on the current payment failure issue if you have the correct advanced billing technology in place.
Take a tour of the Work 365 platform right away to learn more about how you can implement a sophisticated billing platform that enables you to use customer segmentation, customise invoicing and communications, and set advanced workflows and dunning processes.
Work 365 is a subscription revenue software and offers an Office 365 provisioning through customer self service portal.