With the word of recurring billing & invoicing, there is associated the concept of revenue and profit. As a member of the subscription business community, you need to think beyond this. Billing is the point of interaction with the customer. From invoice generation to successful transactions, you need cautiousness at every point.
When invoices used to be handled manually, human errors were the cause of destroying customer relationships. Automation helped to avoid such mistakes. Subscription billing offered many new options to the online business communities. Today, subscription billing has moved far beyond the conventions of online billing.
Even the customers are not satisfied with just one subscription model. They change their subscription type from time to time. They also demand advanced payment methods. To cope with this situation, smart recurring billing is your option. SaaS companies are working to fulfill this need, and you can find many subscription billing software that streamlines billing as well as payment processing.
What Is Smart Recurring Billing?
One of the biggest causes of customer annoyance for online billing and payment is payment failures. Many online billing platforms did not offer to cater to those customers who fail to pay the subscription fee on their first go. Dunning management is unequivocally an effective way to handle failed payments, but smart recurring billing has now taken the lead.
Through smart recurring billing, you can provide your subscribers with the option to retry to pay their recurring billing fee and to know how it benefits your business. You need to read this article till the end.
Better Customer Experience (CX)
When you plan strategies to offer customers a better experience with you, always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. From the customer’s perspective, he gets the bill, and he is ready to pay on time. He visits the link for online payment, but because of any reason, his payment fails.
He will be willing to retry, but if your simple billing software does not allow him, he will definitely be annoyed. The billing and payment process is already complex for a layman to understand. Also, his subscription is at stake.
Smart recurring billing enabling you to let subscribers retry to pay very helpful in these circumstances. If your SaaS recurring billing software provides your customers with customized invoices, different payment methods, and the option to retry to pay subscription charges, you enhance their spending power and CX as well.
Customer Retention
Smart recurring billing improves the CX, which is directly related to customer retention (CR). One of the major reasons for the involuntary churn is the failed payments. You opt for a robust recurring billing platform that minimizes the chances of payment failures. The customer churn will automatically decrease.
Payment Failure ? Poor CX ? Customer Churn ? Revenue Leakage
Payment failure causes not only involuntary churn but also voluntary churn. The system cancels subscriptions for payment failures—voluntary churn. The hiccups in the payment process can annoy the customer, and he can leave himself—voluntary churn. So, shift your subscription business to smart recurring billing and improve customer retention rate.
Reduction in Revenue Leakage
As has been mentioned, payment failure leads customers to quit using your services or products—revenue leakage. By now, you would have realized that payment failures are interlinked with several factors that can directly affect your business.
Facilitating customers to timely pay for the subscription package that they use can save you from many issues that arise one by one in case of subscription payment failure. A well-integrated subscription billing software can save you from all this.
Now you know the role of smart recurring billing in improving the recurring billing business process. For a deeper understanding of the mechanics behind online transactions and subscription models, explore the comprehensive guide on e-billing to stay ahead in the digital payment realm
Other than using an appropriate platform for billing and payment, you can take the following tips to avoid the harm that payment failures cause:
- Notify your customer every time before the deadline to pay the subscription fee. Even if the subscription charges are deducted automatically, your online billing and payment system must notify the customer so that he can deal with, e.g., card-related issues before the transaction for subscriptions.
- Plan dunning because your tone matters the most at this phase. Even if you notified customers timely, there could be many other reasons for not paying in time. You have to be polite with the customer because it is your key to retain the customer in such conditions.
Businesses quickly evolved with the advent of automation. Recurring billing is a successful business model, but it is advised not to jump on the bandwagon. However, payment failures are one of the challenges for all subscription business companies.
Smart recurring billing has come up to be a satisfactory solution to minimize the chances of payment failure. SubscriptionFlow is one of the platforms where you can entertain your subscribers with minimal chances of payment failure.
