Whatsapp Your Recurring Payments! Our New Update Tells All

Your customers are busy people. If your business involves recurring payments, you’re probably familiar with this scenario:

An interested prospect responds to your advertisement or gets in touch with your company. From there on, the drill is pretty much the usual – contact them through the phone, follow up further through Whatsapp and ultimately (hopefully!) close the deal.

But then the prospect hits you with one of these:

 

“Oh, I’m currently overseas for work! I’ll only be back in a month.”

“My schedule has been so packed recently. I’ll let you know when I’ve got the time to pop by and sign up.”

Sounds familiar? If you’ve ever been on the frontline of sales, most likely so. In situations like these, no amount of persuasiveness or irresistible promotional strategy can help secure that sale, simply because the prospect can’t sign up even if they wanted to.

 

What We’re Doing To Combat This

To directly address this issue, Curlec’s latest software addition gives merchants the ability to send eMandates directly over the phone through Whatsapp!

Customer representatives or sales personnel can now message the eMandate form over to the customer, and the customer can sign up without even having to make a trip to the company’s physical store. The process takes less than 5 minutes for the customer, and is done on a purely remote basis.

What’s an eMandate?

For companies with recurring billing payment models, the challenge of late payments and delayed cash flow is all too commonplace. These issues pull companies towards the direction of Direct Debit for its ability to automatically collect payments on a recurring basis. But don’t worry if you’re still new to the world of Direct Debit, brush up on your basic knowledge here!

The eMandate is essentially the digital “registration form”. Customers fill it up to grant permission for the merchant to deduct payments from their bank account via Direct Debit. With Curlec, the eMandate could previously be sent through email – and now through Whatsapp as well!

But why not just use email, then?

The channel you use to sign customers up is more important than you think. It affects your close rate, user experience, and even the relationships between you and your customers.

The response rate for email vs Whatsapp is self-explanatory. Which do you respond to faster, email or Whatsapp? There’s your answer.

When it comes to lead response rates, emails may fare better for B2B approaches. But try sending the average Joe an email follow-up response and you can expect to never hear from him again.

Even if all the necessary convincing has been done, and the only step left is for the prospect to sign up via the eMandate, Whatsapp is a clear method of ensuring the prospect feels more pressured to complete the process, and to complete it ASAP.

 

There’s more than one reason why you should be using Whatsapp to close sales.

Consumer Convenience

The checkout stage is where a prospect turns into a customer. When you pay for your groceries at the checkout, you want it done in a jiffy. The same goes for Direct Debit. In this scenario however, the checkout point is the registration of the eMandate.

By being able to send the eMandate over to the prospect wherever they may be, the prospect enjoys a frictionless “checkout” process where all they have to do is open up their Whatsapp to access the form. Considering that Malaysians were the world’s largest Whatsapp users, that’s a pretty comforting fact.

With our new update, there’s no piles of paper involved, no trips to the bank. Not even the need to open up an inbox.

Competitive Customer Service

According to the director of CEB Matt Dixon, more than 50% of customer loyalty is based on the overall sales experience.

Whatsapp enables for more personal, customized customer interaction. Automated website redirecting and emails can hardly compare to the effect of chatting with a prospect via a messaging app they’re already using every single day.

Sales personnel can naturally answer customer enquiries more pleasantly too. Any bumps the prospect may face or queries they may have while filling up the eMandate can be immediately addressed – all they have to do is text.

This helps the prospect (and soon to be customer!) feel as if the sales rep is always there to help them, effectively instilling more trust and customer loyalty in the company.

 

Smoother Cash Flow

Perhaps most importantly? Sending the eMandate through Whatsapp pretty much guarantees a faster submission.

By sending it through email, there isn’t much sense of urgency for the prospect. It may linger in their inbox, perhaps until it completely slips their mind. And by the time your sales rep follows up with them, they’ve probably already changed their mind and decided they’re better off not doing business with you.

The follow up process becomes more efficient as well. Sending a quick “just checking in” reminder can be done more often and is seen as less intrusive and unwelcome as compared to following up via email or over the phone.

Direct Debit at its core is all about putting the company in control of their cash flow. Paired with the benefits of using Whatsapp, its ability to improve cash flow is only enhanced.

 

Have a go at our new feature for yourself!

You want things done instantly, and so do your customers! Our latest software feature enables you to do all that. After all, Whatsapp is an instant messaging app.

Connect with us using this form here to find out how Direct Debit can help your business become a more profitable one.