Is your company struggling to get customers to sign contracts or make payments in a timely manner?
Digital engagement is the key to more signed contracts, closed deals, and completed payments. A solid digital engagement plan:
- Encourages higher response rates from the requests you send by using email and SMS channels.
- Speeds up interactions, from esignatures and document delivery to photo or file uploads and online payments.
- Enables companies to track requests and monitor reporting for more knowledge, visibility, and control.
What is Digital Engagement?
Digital engagement is when your customers interact with your company through digital channels like email and text message.
For most companies, meaningful engagement usually includes opening and responding to digital business requests, like esignatures, online payments, and uploading photos or files.
Digital Engagement Strategies
If your company sends many agreements, requests, or important documents, digital engagement should be a priority.
A strong digital engagement strategy creates consistency in your processes, high success in reaching customers, and more completed paperwork and payments.
Strategies should cover how you decide to reach customers, what actions you want them to take, and a way to monitor the results.
Communication Channels
Email and text messaging are fast, convenient channels your customers expect. Reduce or eliminate outdated manual phone calls and mail to enhance digital engagement.
Companies that can’t eliminate paper letters can encourage digital engagement through QR codes printed on statements.
Content of Requests
Many companies struggle to get paperwork and payments from customers (especially when doing business online).
The best way to keep customers engaged is to combine as many tasks as possible in one request. This eliminates confusion and reduces abandonment rates.
Monitoring Results
If you do business by phone, you rely on staff to take accurate notes on conversations. Even with traditional email, it’s easy for important papers to get lost or forgotten.
Using esignature and payment software to send emails and SMS allows in-depth tracking and reporting.
Follow one request, or monitor overall performance. This helps you know which digital engagement strategies are effective and which need improvement.
PDCflow For Better Digital Engagement
Deliver requests through multiple channels
Send requests with PDCflow through email and SMS. Or, direct customers to your digital request using a QR code.
The more options you offer, the more likely you are to increase digital engagement from recipients.
Send everything in one request
With PDCflow, combine all of your digital transactions into one request. Here’s what you can do in one message:
- Send to one or many recipients
- Request esignatures
- Send up to five documents
- Request payments
- Request photos and files to be uploaded by the recipient
Create unlimited templates
Set up custom branding
Custom branding makes it easier for customers to trust requests from your company. Set up your company’s logo, brand colors, custom messages, and even send emails from your own company domain.
These custom markers make messages more trustworthy and legitimate, so recipients know they aren’t a scam. More trust in your brand means more completed requests and loyal customers.
Monitor activity with tracking and reporting
PDCflow provides reporting, segmentation, event tracking, and custom notifications, so you can monitor accounts and understand more about your customer base.
Get valuable insights on the channels that get the most engagement, or drill down to one request for specific information.
Engage thousands at once with bulk sends
Increase response with automated reminders
Automated reminders are an extremely effective digital engagement strategy. With PDCflow, businesses can send a reminder before a request expires.
This gives recipients another nudge to sign papers or make their payment. Companies that send reminders during digital interactions have quadrupled their Flow competition rates.
Maintain data privacy and security
As with all technology, digital engagement with customers opens the door to security concerns. Keeping interactions (and the data shared within them) private and secure should be an essential part of any digital engagement plan.
PDCflow keeps messages and customer information secure with features like:
- HIPAA compliance: Send Private Health Information (PHI) in a secure message to comply with HIPAA rules.
- PCI: PDCflow’s PCI compliance features keep credit card information safe and reduce the PCI compliance scope for companies.
- Data encryption and tokenization: PDCflow encrypts information and tokenizes card and ACH payment data.
- Secure data storage: PDCflow stores information in our secure vault. No need for private data or payment information to ever be captured or stored within your company’s systems.
Digital Engagement: PDCflow Customer Results
Assistentcy LLC
One client, extended business office Assistentcy, builds customized early-out recovery programs to assist healthcare organizations with self-pay and after insurance patients
Their business was experiencing several roadblocks in collecting payments over the phone. Here are the issues they identified, and how PDCflow’s software encouraged digital engagement:
Roadblocks
How PDCflow Increased Engagement
Sometimes during phone calls, patients can’t access credit card or banking information to make a payment.
When Assistentcy agents were in this situation before PDCflow, they had to direct people to a website payment page or ask them to call back (and hope consumers would follow through).
PDCflow enabled agents to send a payment request through email or text message to consumers. This increased digital engagement by simplifying the payment process.
With the increase in scams, consumers are more wary of calls claiming they owe someone money. Calls about an unfamiliar bill made patients suspicious.
Sending billing statements with a payment request through PDCflow legitimized Assistentcy’s image. This allowed consumers a chance to verify the amount, creating a positive customer experience.
Not everyone is comfortable reading their card number to a stranger over the phone. Many payments were getting lost because Assistentcy’s consumers wanted a secure way to pay.
PDCflow requests let consumers enter their own payment information in a secure digital environment. This made customers feel more confident paying bills, knowing their data was safe.
Results
The results of Assistentcy using PDCflow requests for better digital engagement:
- Doubled credit card payments
- Saved time and money by reducing their calls to track down payments
- Built trust with consumers while providing convenient requests
EastCoast Entertainment
EastCoast Entertainment is the largest full-service entertainment booking agency in the country. Before implementing PDCflow, EastCoast accepted paper checks through the mail and credit card payments over the phone.
As a national company with offices located throughout the US, EastCoast Entertainment has 35+ agents who create contracts and request payments.
They needed a software solution that made digital engagement possible to speed up payments and simplify contract management for the whole team. Here are some of the problems PDCflow solved:
Roadblocks
How PDCflow Increased Engagement
With Flow reporting and notifications, agents know the status of every Flow transaction they send. This level of tracking and management wasn’t possible before sending requests with PDCflow’s digital channels.
With unlimited users at no extra cost, EastCoast can afford to give every agent a login, so they can manage their own tasks.
This level of tracking helps guide customers through the digital customer journey for better engagement, more signed contracts, and a more organized team structure.
One accountant spent an excessive amount of time calling clients and taking credit card payments over the phone.
With PDCflow, EastCoast customers have higher payment rates through digital engagement.
These extra tasks have been eliminated, freeing the accounting team up to do more important work.
With old-fashioned payment methods, companies like EastCoast Entertainment suffer due to nonpaying customers and bounced checks.
When this happens, the only option is to try to reach customers again to get paid.
PDCflow engages customers quickly through email and SMS, and makes it fast for people to sign agreements and pay. This guarantees payment before services are delivered.
Once funds are deposited, the money is secured, and staff don’t have to worry about nonpayment, bounced checks, or starting the process all over again.
Results
With PDCflow, EastCoast Entertainment had an easier time reaching customers using digital engagement strategies and simplified payment and contract management.
- Simplified contract tracking for dozens of agents
- Eliminated manual, time-wasting accounting processes and trips to the post office
- Increased guaranteed payments and eliminated worry over bounced checks and nonpayment
Do you want to increase digital engagement to collect more signatures, collect more payments, and reduce time spent on manual follow-ups?
For more information on PDCflow, sign up for a demo today.
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- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
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