Authenticity is central to the mission of serving community. That’s why outsourcing any task requires distinct planning to assure that your voice and brand remain authentic at the heart of every conversation with members. This is especially the case with the sensitive nature of payment declines. So before indulging a gut reaction to the idea of outsourcing payment resubmission services, take a few minutes to better understand how much time (not to mention money) can be saved entrusting a dedicated team to help recover declined payments.
What About Time?
Outsourcing the numerous tasks to resolve payment declines will save your organization valuable working hours. Take the YMCA of Greater Omaha as an example. What used to take 25 hours per week now takes 6. This is a 76% decrease in staff hours to resolve declines each week. So the next question is, how does it all work?
Stop Declines Before They Happen
Our first stop is outlining exactly how payment declines can be prevented before they happen. About 1 in 3 people replace their credit card each year. This means a decline occurs simply because the member has an inactive credit card number associated with their profile. With a proactive card account updater, these issues are entirely avoided. Credit card numbers are updated automatically, the payment is not declined, your organization collects that money and now has that time to work on other tasks and engage with your community. This is an important first stop because it outlines that adopting software with a proactive card account updater actually decreases the number of members who will need to be contacted about declined payments. Those declined payments are resolved before they even occur!
A Decline Resubmission Strategy to Save Time
Our second stop after side-stepping one third of declines before they even occur is resubmission. Collecting any payment takes an average of 2 seconds. But in that short time, there are 10-14 different entities communicating with one another and “signing off” on the payment. With so many steps behind the scenes, many payments are declined for reasons that have nothing to do with insufficient funds (NSF). This means a simple resubmission will collect payment. But, the manual task of weeding out which declines fall in this camp is time-consuming. This is why software that automatically weeds out NSF declines and resubmits the rest will save your organization time and money. These payments will now be collected shortly after they were declined!
Reaching Out to Members
This is the final step, and maybe the one that makes you nervous. The step of communicating directly with members about payment declines can be delicate and result in termination. However, often communicating with banks resolves the decline, meaning the member was never contacted by the Gains full-service billing team at all. With 30+ years of experience resolving payment declines, the Gains team approaches decline recovery with empathy and authenticity to best represent organizations like yours and save members from terminating.
Contact a specialist today and learn more about how Gains full-service billing can save you time and money.