In today’s day and age, the world is moving faster than ever before. With the internet and the proliferation of smartphones, we have access to nearly unlimited data and information. Additionally, developing new apps and businesses is easier than ever, meaning competition is increasing in most industries. So what does this mean for modern companies? Whether you serve consumers, small businesses, or large enterprises, customers have a tremendous number of choices.
The Deterioration of Market Share
This proliferation of competition and choices can be problematic to businesses and cause market share to deteriorate. Eventually, there will be winners that take the majority of the market share, and losers that either scrape by or shut down unless they choose to innovate or differentiate.
Financial Services Trends
In the financial services industry, many products are being commoditized. Unfortunately, this can create a race to the bottom as companies with nearly identical products compete by lowering prices. However, lowering prices does not have to be the only way to differentiate a product and win market share. Instead of competing on price, another option is to focus on the customer experience. That’s what PaySimple has done, and that’s what other companies can do as well.
Providing an Amazing Customer Experience
In our industry, many companies can process a payment, but at PaySimple, we differentiate by alleviating pain points that our competitors ignore. Here’s what we do at PaySimple and how you can bring this model to your business.
Purpose Before Profits
At PaySimple, we believe in purpose before profits. This is our guiding light and the core value we make all decisions off of. Our purpose is to help our employees and customers realize their full potential. We treat our employees as invaluable resources vital to our success because they are. That positive attitude and appreciation then flow to our customers through amazing customer service.
So while our competitors focus on increasing their profits and getting the most out of their teams and customers, we are putting our teams and customers first and asking ourselves how we can better serve and eliminate pain points.
Onboarding
Many companies provide online tutorials and require their customers to figure out onboarding on their own. This has the potential to start the relationship off on the wrong foot and can cause ripple effects down the road if the systems aren’t set up properly in the beginning. We go above and beyond by helping our customers with the onboarding process.
We help make their lives easier, and while this takes more time upfront, the long-term impact is higher retention and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we have found that the more we focus on this, the more we become experts. So, our customers save time, and so do we.
Customer Service
While most companies in our industry are automating more and more, we focus on providing excellent customer service with actual human beings. We do not outsource to other countries or make it difficult to reach us. Our customers can even call us on the phone and talk to an actual person if they don’t want to go through the online chat. This also has the added benefit of our customers having a human connection with our company, which increases trust and likability.
Dealing with Issues
Cash is the lifeblood of a business, so a payment issue can be a very stressful situation for a small business owner. We are available to our customers to alleviate their stress and help them save time when they need it. We also provide dedicated partners that can provide the tools our customers need to achieve their goals and succeed.
The Payoff
By having a people before profits core philosophy, we can create a culture of happy employees, which directly correlates to happy customers. Next, proving to our customers that we are there with them has enabled us to maintain high levels of customer retention. It has also helped with our marketing as we are able to find new customers who are dissatisfied with the experiences they had with other companies. Ultimately, this strategy has helped us see the financial results we’re looking for, and we believe this model is a great tool if you’re looking to differentiate your business.
