Bring your premium collection process into the modern era
When you provide a digital payment option, you make your life easier, and you make your customers happier.
The current process of collecting premiums has got to go.
Chasing down premiums wastes time and effort, introduces a myriad of opportunities for error and, most importantly, is an outdated and uncomfortable process for customers.
In today’s digital economy, consumers expect a certain type of experience when paying for products or services online. From shopping online for that favorite pair of shoes to paying their insurance premium via a text message, the ability to get tasks done quickly and easily is the key to keeping customers happy.
If you want your collections process to run like a well-oiled machine, it’s time to embrace digital payments. Let’s take a look at each advantage:
No. 1: Save time.
When you’re running a business, you need to get paid. If you aren’t getting paid, you need to dedicate time and energy to chasing down delinquent accounts. Once you get in touch with your customers, you have to process their payment manually.
It doesn’t take many past due accounts for this process to eat up hours upon hours of time. By going digital with your payments process, you can automate payment reminders and within the same email, direct customers right to a payment page; no time spent hounding customers and no strain on your relationship from uncomfortable conversations. Not to mention, utilizing a state-of-the-art digital payment solution to automate portions of the accounts-receivable process reduces internal workloads for your staff, which will drive a more profitable book of business.
No. 2: Reduce errors.
If you’ve taken a payment over the phone, you know that there are a thousand ways to make an error: You can mishear a letter, mistype a number, or make any number of little mistakes. The only thing worse than hounding a customer about a payment, is having to go back to them again because you messed it up. With a customized checkout experience, customers can view and pay their premiums with ease, while businesses can track payments and manage their cashflow more effectively. This type of enhanced automation and digital process allows customers to enter their information directly, so the game of telephone is taken out of the equation.
No. 3: Better customer experience.
If you think it’s uncomfortable to make calls about delinquent payments, you can imagine how uncomfortable it is to receive them. Your customers don’t want to be put in that situation, and they’ve gotten used to paying for everything online anyway. Providing a digital option will make customers’ lives easier will allow them to pay the way that they have gotten used to paying.
When you provide a digital payment option, you make your life easier, and you make your customers happier. Going digital is the best way to remove the headache of the collections process and bolster customer satisfaction.
Chase Petrey is president of Applied Pay. These opinions are the author’s own.
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