What’s Your Billing Doing For You?

Often commoditized, billing and payment services may appear to be the same on the surface. While payment processing isn’t always exciting, there are some great components to remember and look for. Automation helps alleviate much of what used to be manual legwork or button pushing. Self-service options are a valuable piece of the payment processing puzzle. Here are several things to consider when it comes to your billing and payment services.

• Automation: Set it and forget it! Automating traditionally manual processes is great for any business and certainly, billing is no exception. Automation of billing processes empowers you to spend more time focused on your members. Automated billing and retry processes for declined payments are core offerings. Other billing automation to consider includes: member communications, alerts, reporting, return management, updating billing and payment methods, and more.

• Self-Service Options: Online payments are a must and giving this flexibility to your members is an essential part of any self-service option. Your members should also have the option to update their billing over the phone, anytime of the day or night and not just during business hours.

• Credit Card Updater: While your members won’t always remember to update their billing information when it changes, you can receive these updates directly from the credit card companies. The credit card updater program is a great service to update cards that have changed for whatever reason: expired, lost/stolen, fraud, new card issued, etc.

• Text and Voice Messaging: As mentioned above, this is another process benefiting from automation. You can send billing reminders for upcoming payments, missed or declined payments, expired or invalid payment alerts, and much more. This can be done with text, email, phone, or voice messaging campaigns.

• Reporting and Analytics: Insight into your data is always important, particularly when it comes to the monies your business is pulling in. You need the ability to analyze trends, research possible challenges, and dig into your billing data in real time. Dashboard tools and the ability to pull reports anytime or anywhere give you the power to do this. Automated alerts and notifications can help you focus on the critical areas of your billing and payment services without getting lost in the details.

No matter your billing needs, the items listed above are useful tools to have in your payment services toolbox.