Consumers love choice. In today’s world, more than ever, your customers will appreciate being allowed to do things in their preferred way. It doesn’t matter what that ‘thing’ is, customising allows any product or service to instantly become more personal. When customers are looking for ways of settling their bills with your business, they will want to be able to do it their own way.’
And who can blame them? Customers have grown used to having choices laid out in front of them. When we want to buy something online, we can be certain that e-commerce sites will allow us to pay with debit or credit cards. However, we are increasingly seeing other payment options alongside the usual card options.
For one off payments, customers make to your business, card payments are usually the most convenient. Some people might prefer to do a bank transfer instead, but this choice usually falls second to card methods.
For situations when your customers need to make regular repeat payments to your business, direct debit it usually the preferred method. Direct debit is automatic, which makes it convenient for customers, while also giving you peace of mind.
Despite the numerous upsides to direct debit, there are still relatively few businesses offering this option to their customers. However, direct debit can offer numerous benefits to your business. Both the flexibility and the automation that direct debit offers are big selling points. But direct debit also offers a low failure rate and low transaction costs. The benefits of direct debit make it a valuable tool, and yet businesses have largely ignored it until now.
Direct debit doesn’t just benefit your business though, it is also beneficial to your customers as well. These benefits will add value to your business and the service that you provide. Once you add the option for your customers to pay by direct debit, you then want to maximise the uptake.
Offer an Incentive
Some businesses have found that by offering their customers incentives for paying by direct debit they have been able to encourage many of them to do so. Free giveaways will always cost a business, of course. However, using direct debit payments will save your company money in terms of time, admin, and cost savings.
There are a number of different forms that these incentives can take. These can be supplementary products which are relevant to the purchase the customer is making. In other cases, these incentives take the form of discounts on other products and services.
Sell the Benefits
Probably the most effective method of encouraging your customers to start paying by direct debit is to explain the benefits to them. Once customers come to understand the benefits of paying their bills by direct debit, it will be hard to stop them. For smaller and more personal businesses, paying by direct debit is a small way in which customers can support your website by helping to reduce your costs.
You should emphasise to customers that paying regular bills by direct debit is far easier and more convenient than other payment methods. Direct debit is reliable for you both. For customers it ensures that their payments will be made on time. From the perspective of a business, it also makes it far more likely that you will be paid. Direct debit collections are much easier when you use direct debit software in the cloud. Using a cloud based solution means that you can manage payments from anywhere. This cloud-based software makes direct debit processing easy and more secure. Make, process and collect direct debit payments with ease using AccessPay’s cloud-based solution.
Put Direct Debit First
One of the easiest ways that you can encourage your customers to adopt a new payment option or service is to put it first amongst all the options you offer. For one off payments from customers, direct debit is not suitable. One off payments should be made using either bank transfers or card payments. However, where repeat payments are required, direct debit is usually the most popular option.
Direct debit is the preferred method for making repeat and regular payments from a bank account. Setting up direct debit payments is easy for customers, and there are a number of different payment services who include direct debit processing. Offering direct debit as a payment option to your customers will benefit them and you.
