Customer experience is imperative to a business, sometimes more important than the product sold. Improved customer service will give you loyal customers for a lifetime and also attract new customers. One of the best ways to improve customer experience is to give them an excellent billing experience. The advantages of providing a great billing experience are:
1. Enhance customer retention
Delivering personalized services can make a customer remain devoted to your product and services. The customer must be made to feel important and special and care must be taken to provide that experience. The billing system must include the following features to enhance customer experience:
- Different application interface like account information, customer status, e-commerce portals and CRM should be tightly integrated with one another to provide a single customer view.
- Real-time monitoring and reporting of customer usage should be made available to the customers.
2. Reduction of Churn
“Customers are King”. This statement holds very true in today’s business as customers are very clear particular about what they need and with so many products and services of the same type in the market, losing a customer is easy. More customers are lost due to weak technology rather than an ineffective product. Loss of customers can be prevented by including these three important changes in your billing which are: Enabling automatic retry which allows you to retry failed transactions, account updater which automatically retrieves new card details when a card is replaced and a number of payment wallets as alternative payment methods.
3. Competitive Advantage
When your employees develop a better customer relationship, they make an extra effort to keep them and not lose their loyalty. This increases the sustainability and the competitive index of the business. Some of the key factors to improve competitive advantage are:
- Confidence: The customer should have faith in your company and the quality of service provided.
- Integrity: The customer should be convinced that the company has high integrity and is honest.
- Customer-Employee Relation: A rude employee is a big turn-off. Employees must be trained well to be pleasant and friendly with the customers. A good customer-employee relation will ensure customer retention.
4. Saves time
A good billing software in place will save a lot of the customer’s time which will retain customers and also attract new ones. Attractive and easy user-interface and seamless transition from one API to another will save a lot of time. A good billing software has easy invoice generation, different payment option where customers can resort to another mode of payment in case one fails due to technical error, recurring payments for regular customers are all methods to save customers precious time and in turn, gain their loyalty.
How to provide a great billing experience?
Customers can be retained and gained by providing them excellent service experience. A happy customer will bring more customer and by word of mouth the company name will spread like wildfire. A number of software can be employed to deliver to the customer a smooth billing experience. Point of sales software, billing software, CRM software, cloud-based invoicing software are all aimed at enriching the customer experience. Automatic emailing of invoices to the customer will save a lot of the customer’s time.
1. Personalization
Customers should be made to feel welcome at your company. The different plans and schemes should be made available and tailored according to the customer’s needs. A customer should be able to choose if he wants online invoices or paper printed ones. The billing process should not be lengthy and cumbersome. It should be made as simple and easy as possible. Customer information, account status and their real-time usage should be made available to them.
2. Connected payment methods
A number of new methods are being invented to enable quick, safe and easy payment options for customers. From major payment systems to merchant branded payment systems, it has become highly integral to a business. Once a customer gets accustomed to a payment method they use that in all their devices and in every aspect of their lives. Connected payments require a robust and flexible infrastructure and a high network scale.
3. Reduce stopping points during payment
Any payment method which requires the customer to put in an extra effort will prove harmful for the business as the last thing the customers need is to waste their time. There are a number of disadvantages and stopping points in using paper invoices and it involves printing out invoices, posting them, waiting for it to be read by the recipient and awaiting response, thereby making it an inefficient and long process. It is very time-consuming. A good, automated payment and billing system will be of great advantage to the customers as well as the business. It also saves the time for customer and reduces checkout process which gives huge advantage to supermarkets and places where there is big line of customer waiting for checkout.
4. Automation
Automation can reduce the payment time and save a lot of your customer’s time which will enhance their loyalty towards your business. Automation of payments has the following advantages:
- Stores customer’s card and account information which saves the customer from the trouble of having to re-enter the details.
- Sets up recurring bill schedules for an automatic monthly charge.
- Has online invoice processing to enable payments anywhere, anytime.
5. Create payment plans
Sometimes customers will not be able to make full payment in a timely manner because of their business type or delay in income. Continuous persistence to make them pay the full amount might result in losing the customer. Therefore, a payment plan can be worked out with them to reduce their load. The payment plan can be automated to charge a customer’s credit or debit card for seamless payment.
6. Loyalty towards the brand
Customers do not want to or have the time to keep changing products and services. When choosing a product, the customer spends a lot of time in research on that and expects to stick by it throughout. But for increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, it is important to devise and employ methods which will retain old customers and attract new ones like a magnet. Personalization is king in that regard. Businesses should put themselves in the customer’s shoe to figure out and analyze the best customer experience that can be provided. This will ensure lifetime customer loyalty towards the brand.
An efficient billing process is very crucial to a business process. A safe, secure, fast and reliable billing method is sure to bring in more customers and boost the business.
Author Bio
Divyanshu Jangid is a Digital marketing expert with experience in marketing and communications. His interests include researching, reading about new technologies and content marketing. When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with his family, friends and playing billiards.
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