Most of us use textual content messaging to speak each day.

We textual content to verify dinner plans. We textual content about random ideas or occasions that occur all through our day. And we textual content to share data — whether or not it is an intriguing article we have learn, or a humorous YouTube video we have watched.

So it solely is smart to permit your customers to make funds by way of textual content.

One firm that goals to assist small companies create a extra environment friendly and seamless fee expertise is Podium, a Utah-based know-how firm that gives easy-to-use evaluate, messaging, and fee instruments. 

Right here, I sat down with Podium’s Funds Product Lead, Jim Christian, to debate the advantages of text-to-pay for small companies, plus text-to-pay greatest practices if your small business is contemplating the swap. Let’s dive in.

Why think about text-to-pay?

To exhibit the true energy of text-to-pay — often known as SMS (Brief Messaging Service) fee — for customers, let’s think about a multiple-choice query.

You have lately bought a brand new range. You have got three choices for fee. Select one from the next choices:

1. You obtain a invoice within the mail, which features a web site or telephone quantity to name to make a fee. You allow the invoice in your kitchen counter and ignore it for 2 weeks, earlier than lastly taking the time to log into the web site and make the fee.
2. You obtain a invoice by way of e mail, the place it by accident leads to your spam folder till you get repeated calls from the range firm, asking you to please make the fee.
3. You obtain a textual content whilst you’re on the grocery retailer. In three fast clicks, you’ve got made your fee together with your Apple pockets — all earlier than attending to the top of the checkout line.

I am prepared to wager, in most cases, you’d go for C. It is quick, handy, and safe. The three main advantages of text-to-pay, in response to Jim Christian. Let’s discover every of those three advantages now.

1. text-to-pay is handy.

As Christian places it, “All of us textual content, and in comparison with options like e mail or snail mail, we all know that we learn most (if not all) of our textual content messages. At a 98% open fee, textual content is a good channel to get seen and receives a commission.”

Which is smart. We’re already on our telephones for many of the day to speak with family and friends. And as of 2022, roughly 50% of customers would like to speak with a model by way of textual content message (SMS), versus different types of communication like e mail, apps, or unsolicited mail.

Textual content-to-pay is handy in your workers, too. It frees up useful time to concentrate on different features of the enterprise, relatively than spending hours on the telephone monitoring down prospects to gather fee.

2. text-to-pay is quick.

Christian continues, “The second profit is pace. Take into consideration the final paper invoice you bought within the mail — what number of days did it sit earlier than you opened it? Then again, most textual content messages are opened inside minutes of receiving them, which makes issues lots sooner.”

Contemplate Valley Roofing in Virginia, who lowered the typical time between sending an bill and receiving fee from two weeks to lower than 24 hours by providing textual content funds by way of Podium. 

In the end, your customers will admire the pace with which they’ll make a fee in your services or products — and, since quick options are a serious element of excessive buyer satisfaction, it is vital in your long-term success that you just present the quickest means potential in your customers.

3. text-to-pay is safe.

One different main profit to text-to-pay? Safety.

Christian advised me, “For those who evaluate the sort of fee strategies that a number of native companies are utilizing — whether or not that is calling up the shopper over the telephone to gather bank card data, sending a paper invoice, or asking them to come back into the workplace — our textual content message funds are extraordinarily safe, and are constructed on high of Stripe, a globally trusted and safe fee processing platform.”

It needs to be famous that Podium’s text-to-pay hyperlinks function like a safe e-commerce checkout. You solely want to produce your bank card data. No different personally identifiable data (PII) or private well being data (PHI) is handed to Stripe.

I did marvel how safe it feels for customers once they obtain a textual content, out of the blue, immediately requesting your bank card data, or whether or not it may possibly by accident come throughout as spammy. Luckily, Christian has an answer to that.

“Companies which can be profitable with text-to-pay are those that construct it into their whole buyer expertise.”

As an illustration, Christian posits, possibly your native auto-service middle texts you common updates in your automobile. When it is time to pay, they may say, “Hey, we will be sending you a safe fee hyperlink that’s protected to open.” Then, the auto-service middle can naturally embrace the text-to-pay hyperlink immediately into your ongoing dialog.

For those who’re satisfied text-to-pay is an effective possibility for your small business, maintain studying. We’ll dive into greatest practices for optimizing textual content funds, subsequent.

Finest Practices for text-to-pay

1. Construct text-to-pay into all the buyer expertise.

To really excel at leveraging text-to-pay, it is vital your small business focuses on how SMS can enhance your buyer expertise from start-to-finish.

As an illustration, how will you interact together with your prospects by way of textual content prior to fee? And how will you proceed to speak with them by way of SMS after they’ve paid?

As Christian advised me, “Placing textual content funds into all the buyer journey permits the enterprise to do issues based mostly on the transaction. Podium permits companies to mechanically ship a request to the shopper to put in writing a evaluate on the services or products after fee is full.”

Asking for a evaluate proper after a transaction happens will help you accumulate extra buyer opinions, because you’re asking once you’re top-of-mind.

Moreover, you may think about providing SMS coupons to encourage repeat purchases. The 2022 State of Native Enterprise Report discovered customers redeem SMS coupons 10X greater than every other coupon.

2. Supply and settle for a wide range of fee choices.

These days, the companies that make fee straightforward are the companies that win.

Contemplate, for example, once I’m out operating errands and understand I’ve forgotten my debit card. The espresso store across the nook that accepts Apple Pay will develop into my espresso store of selection.

Alternatively, ecommerce websites like Amazon make funds virtually easy by saving my fee data and enabling me to buy something — whether or not or not it’s clothes or Entire Meals groceries — with a click on of a button.

As ecommerce continues to evolve within the route of comfort, it is going to develop into more and more crucial that companies provide fee choices. These choices embrace a financial institution switch, a credit score or debit card, Apple pay, Google pay, and even shopper financing choices to purchase now, pay later.

Christian says, “As new fee strategies develop into well-liked and new applied sciences develop into extra broadly adopted … We’re at all times asking, ‘How can we make it even simpler for native companies to receives a commission?'”

Moreover, Christian advises companies to make the fee course of really feel pure. As an illustration, if you happen to’re speaking together with your customers on Fb messenger, ship the fee type by way of Fb messenger, too.

3. Use a trusted platform.

To get began with text-to-pay, you may need to make sure you’re utilizing the proper instruments for your small business. Podium is one efficient possibility, with over 100,000 native companies already leveraging the platform.

Uncertain if your organization is the proper match for textual content funds? I requested Christian which industries or companies he’d recommend as best-suited for SMS funds, and he advised me, “It is a good match for any enterprise that desires to construct a greater relationship with their prospects”

He provides, “As an illustration, a pair transforming their kitchen could make a number of visits to the identical equipment retailer to grasp all the things about an equipment bundle earlier than making that giant buy. That is an ideal alternative for text-to-pay.”

In the end, solely if text-to-pay is an efficient answer for your small business. But it surely’s value remembering — text-to-pay is not simply handy in your customers. It will probably additionally allow your small business to run extra easily, decrease transaction charges, and unlock your organization to focus extra on what actually issues: The work itself.