The sales and service landscape has changed dramatically over the past two years, as customers find new ways to simplify their buying experience. Text-to-pay has been around for a while, but now it has become a common product for most businesses.

Customers have gotten used to buying things in the comfort of their own home, using all forms of digital payments.

If you haven’t set up this product, we’ll explain some big reasons why you should. And if you already have text-to-pay, we’ll share some insight into how you can improve the service for your customers.

Top 5 Reasons Businesses Should Use Text-to-Pay.

1. Customers Want to Text You

We have done several blog posts about why business texting is so important, but the number one reason is that customers want you to text them.

We found that nearly 90% of all customers would prefer to interact with a business by text, rather than a phone call. Nearly 80% say texting is the fastest way to reach them for purchase and service updates.

Adding a text-to-pay feature will only add to the customer experience. They are expecting you to have this feature because they have used it with so many other businesses already. This number has skyrocketed during the pandemic.

Credit cards are not going away, they are just shifting to remote forms of payment.

2. Get Paid Faster

Texts get opened around 98% of the time, with 95% of all texts read within three minutes of being sent.

By offering text-to-pay, you are going to have an easier time collecting. No more leaving voicemails, or waiting by the phone for a call-back. You can send someone a text in seconds, and they can respond with the payment.

Through the platform, you can also send them invoices with a breakdown of the bill, so they know exactly what they are paying for. You can even write a description in the text-to-pay request so there is no confusion about what is being paid for.

3. Reduce Accounts Receivable

With a lot of businesses dealing with staffing issues, this may be the biggest reason to add text-to-pay. With more customers filling out the information themselves, you can reduce the number of employees need for accounts receivable.

This cuts down their workload by hours or even days. If they are spending just a few minutes texting customers about payments, instead of leaving voicemails or playing phone tag, that frees them up to help in other areas of the business.

Not to mention it saves the customer time by not having to pay in-person or read off a credit card number over the phone.

4. Collect Pre-Payments for Faster Service

With the text-to-pay platform, customers can pre-pay for service. If they bring something in to get worked on, they can pre-pay before it gets done, so all they need to do is come pick it up and take off.

This trend has gotten more popular during the pandemic as people limit their in-person interactions.

This will also allow you to offer curbside pickup and after-hours drop offs. So, customers can pre-pay for the service, and just come by to pickup their equipment whenever its ready.

5. Increase Contactless Interaction for Customers

This all boils down to simplicity and convenience. Customers want to be able to buy things from the comfort of their own home. Many are moving away from in-person interactions and shifting to remote payments.

Text-to-pay offers customers the option to pay where and when they want, and they don’t have to travel to a store to complete the transaction.

Kenect also offers virtual terminals and mobile card scanners so you can make it easy for your customers to pick up equipment from your service bay, and pay on the spot, without having to come into the store.

Its all about making the customer feel comfortable. Letting them choose the way they want to pay, and how they want to interact with your business.

‍