Expanding Bill Pay Capabilities to Meet Expanding Needs
Customer satisfaction, retention and growth are the obvious goals of businesses across all industries. And omni-channel payment tools are a powerful way that businesses can make their customer’s lives easier by making the process of paying their bills simple.
But when it comes to providing your customers with the most user-friendly and customer-centric payment options available, how well do you know your customers and their needs? Better yet, how are you addressing the unique needs of not only your current customers but the anticipated needs of future customers?
Casting a Wide Net When It Comes to Customers
The first thing you must ask yourself is how broadly are you thinking when it comes to customer satisfaction and user experience? You may believe that you already have all of the cutting-edge payments technology tools to make payments a breeze for all consumers. But is that true for your customers who have disabilities?
Payment technology like IVR, pay by text and online bill pay not only make the process of paying bills easier for the disabled, it can also increase the likelihood of receiving those customers’ payments on time. For some businesses who already have these tools available to customers, it’s an issue of awareness.
Customers with unique needs may not be aware that they have options when it comes to how they pay their bills. As part of casting a wide net, businesses must be sure that they are alerting their customers to all the different payment options available. After all, the goal of casting a wide net is so that businesses can confidently say to their customers, “We can serve you.”
Not All Customers Are the Same
For some customers, a language barrier stands in between them and a seamless payment experience. What services, tools or support do you offer to customers whose primary language is not English?
If a customer with a language barrier is having difficulty making a payment, customer support tools such as chatbots can also be optimized to serve their needs and offer troubleshooting. Listening to the feedback of your customers to learn the preferred languages most commonly used by them will help you ensure that questions or payment needs don’t go unanswered.
Not only does chatbot customer support technology come in hundreds of languages, it also addresses the needs of multi-taskers. People like busy working parents who spend most of their day in front of a computer, people who do not have the ability to pay via their mobile devices or those who simply prefer not to speak to anyone while making payments. Are you currently offering these tools and can you say, without hesitation, “We can serve you” to those customers?
Making Payments Possible for the Unbanked, Cash Preferred and Underbanked Consumer
Why is offering payment options to the unbanked and underbanked demographic so important? According to research by ResearchandMarket.com, the value of the unbanked mobile payments market is projected to reach $421 billion by 2026. So what are you currently doing to help these consumers make payments as easily as those with more traditional funding sources?
Does your billing and payment partner allow underbanked and unbanked customers access to utilize tools such as digitized cash (through partners like PayPal) and in-app payments to allow these consumers to pay their bills? Not only are these methods of payment easy to use, they remove the stigma and barrier of entry for this important customer demographic.
As the face of banking’s future changes, the unbanked consumer will become even more important when it comes to customer satisfaction and retention. Adoption, promotion and expansion of the digital wallet must be inclusive of customers who have otherwise felt left out when it comes to payment technology. Without their participation in and feedback on the evolution of the bill pay process, no business can truly say, “We can serve you.”
