8 Tips for Reminding Your Customers for Payment
Nagging Panda knows that timely payments are crucial in keeping any business afloat. When payments are not paid on time, the business’s cash flow hinders growth.
Sending payment reminders gives your customer the push they need to ensure payment is made timeously and builds a good relationship between you and your customer.
When Your customer receives communication by sending automated friendly payment reminders through email or SMS, or both, payment will hopefully be forthcoming.
So, what exactly are payment reminders, and how do you go about it?
A payment reminder is a message sent to customers to remind them of an outstanding balance on their account at a merchant. It is typically sent via email or SMS. This type of communication aims to ensure that customers stay up to date with their payments and not leave contact long enough to be forgotten about.
Nagging Panda looks at the three main life phases of an invoice and quote – Before, on, and after the due date of your invoice or the expiry date of your quote.
How you remind your customer for payment, 8 simple tips –
1. Professional Paperwork
You can create PDFs from excel or word, but utilising professional documentation to communicate to customers will go a long way in getting you paid. Professional invoices, statements, quotes, credit notes, etc, will show your customers that you are serious about your business. Using a professional system like Nagging Panda or popular accounting systems to generate the paperwork you need will go a long way.
2. Make it Easy and Convenient for Customers to Pay You!
Times have changed! Online (digital) payments have made it much easier for individuals and businesses to get paid! It would help if you offered convenient payment solutions to your customers; you will experience that customers are more likely to pay promptly. Don’t make your customers jump through hoops to pay you. Even if a small and standard hoop – it’s going to cause a delay –
“I have to log in to my bank account and create the payment- I’ll do it later”, your customer will think to themselves.
With Nagging Panda, you can offer a payment solution that allows your customers to pay you as soon as they receive your invoice. Nagging Panda provides functionality to enable your customers to pay at the click of a button.
3. Be Consistent
Being consistent shows your customers that you are on top of your business. Nagging Panda will ensure that you can consistently follow up on invoice payments and quotes.
4. Mention the Due Date of the Invoice
Make sure you set the due date of your invoice. This may sound like a simple statement, but a customer must understand the payment terms for their invoices.
5. Assume the Best
Not all non-paying customers are bad! Some of them may have just forgotten to pay an invoice. Some may have cash flow problems. Make sure to communicate and remember that a non-paying customer is still a customer until you’ve entirely written them off and sent them to the debt collector. But until then, they are still your customer!
6. Invoice and Remind Immediately
It is essential to invoice your customers as soon as the job is completed or the goods have been delivered. This will keep you fresh in the mind of your customers. The ease of Nagging Panda is that you can invoice your customer and set up your reminders ahead of time, so you won’t forget to remind/nag them!
7. Be Available
Always be available to assist your customers with any queries or complaints. Set reasonable turnaround times for query resolution and keep to them.
8. Be Polite but Direct
Being polite will go a long way in getting you paid. Customers often forget to pay, and going out all guns blazing could potentially drive customers away for good. Remember, customers, are the heart of any business. By no means are we suggesting that customers should be allowed to delay payments or not pay at all, but it is essential that when dealing with customers, communication should always be polite and well-mannered, pre-written, calm minded, templates are an excellent solution, particularly if staff are involved as it means less training is required.
Article by Nagging Panda - 2023/03/07