Your brand promise tells your customers what they should expect from your subscription business and how you want your customers to feel when they do business with you. Keeping that promise gives your business credibility and builds trust with your customers — it’s the lynchpin of the customer experience. And while you may not have seen it this way before now, providing a smooth payments experience is part of your brand promise.
The Connection Between Brand Promise and Customer Retention
Every time you fulfill your brand promise you’re building trust with your customers. And this trust is a key part of your retention strategy — the more your customers trust you, the more your brand is worth to them, and they will stay with you longer. This is even more important during times of economic crisis, when your customers may have less disposable income and may need to curb spending. But the trust you’ve built can quickly be eroded depending on the recovery techniques you use when a payment fails.
Failed Payment Recovery and Your Customer Experience
Our research shows that traditional recovery methods that tell the customer their payment has failed prompts 27% of account holders to cancel their subscription instead of providing an alternate or updated credit card. These are customers who were satisfied with a product or service until they found out about the failed payment and decided to cancel their subscription when somebody reached out to them. Fortunately, the right failed payment recovery strategy will help maintain a positive customer experience and improve retention.
A smooth payments experience is part of a strong brand promise and improves the customer experience.
Your First Life of Defense: Invisible Recovery™
FlexPay’s Invisible Recovery™ is an AI-powered solution that works quickly behind the scenes while completely avoiding customer visibility to the failed payment. This reduces the churn created when subscription customers are made aware of their payment issue. It’s perfect for soft declines, such as NSF or Do Not Honor, and gets optimal results when used as your first line of defense before trying in-house recovery methods like call center outreach.
Collaborate for Success with Engaged Recovery™
If you have a situation where customer contact is needed, the best option is to use a personalized customer outreach strategy that encourages the customer to work with you. FlexPay’s Engaged Recovery™ outreach uses SMS and email messaging personalized to suit the communication preferences of the customer and is delivered at the ideal time to ensure the best response rate. These messages use a tone of voice that appeals to the customer’s communication style and offer a variety of options to help them complete their payment. Treating the customer in such a positive, empathetic way makes them feel appreciated and valued, an important part of a positive customer experience.
The Best Payment Recovery Techniques for a Positive Customer Experience
Your customers expect their payment to go through without a hitch month after month. You’ve promised to deliver your product or service, and you can’t do that without the payment. But when a payment inevitably fails, you need to implement a payment recovery experience that’s either invisible to the customer or connects with them in a positive manner. Using both Invisible Recovery and Engaged Recovery gives you an optimal failed payment recovery solution that will help you maintain a positive customer experience and allow you to keep your brand promise.
Want to improve your customer experience and improve retention? Reach out to our team to get started.
