The customer journey: billing that brings it home

Posted:
09/06/2016
| By: Craig Fulton
“Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.” – Horst Schulz, Former President, Ritz Carlton Hotels

If you’re in business, I feel safe assuming you want to make a profit. That means attracting and retaining profitable customers by exceeding their expectations and keeping them satisfied with your quality of products and service. Being profitable also requires maintaining high levels of efficiency so you can effectively manage costs across all business areas.

In this blog series, I’ve highlighted six essential steps in the customer journey, and looked at ways to increase both customer satisfaction and efficiency, resulting in greater profitability. With this final post, we’ve arrived at a traditionally unpopular (but very important) location in the journey: billing. I can almost hear the collective sigh. But don’t jump track yet – we’re headed to a good place, I promise.

If you’re like most businesses, the cost of getting paid may be among your highest expenses. To that point, there are even expert suggestions on how much you can get away with billing…for billing. From tracking billable hours to translating that data into accurate invoices and making sure they are delivered quickly, costs add up. Then there’s time spent managing client questions or disputes about a bill, researching and making necessary revisions, and following up on late receivables. If the process backs up, so does the cash flow.

To be fair, billing isn’t always a party on the receiving end, either. Customers want timely, detailed, and easy-to-read invoices they trust to be accurate – all part of that 100% satisfaction Horst Schulz was talking about.

Accurate, professional, cost-effective billing calls for an automation tool up to the task. ConnectWise soothes your billing pain by simplifying your invoicing workload, which in turn maximizes your resources for core business activity.

  • Centralize all billing information in one system that can track and automate invoicing
  • Ensure what was quoted is what will be billed
  • Bill support time and license fees together
  • Generate on-demand reports and invoices with just a click
  • Automatically review invoices for accuracy before sending
  • Maximize recurring revenue with automatic payments

ConnectWise is committed to providing solutions that help you—and your customers—arrive at a destination of long-term success.