"Collections is about Connections" - Tesorio CEO Carlos Vega highlighted in a conversation featuring finance leaders from Snowflake, Slack, and Veeva Systems. One influences the other: great relationships with customers increase the likelihood of collections being more effective. On the flip side of the coin, good collection practices and a streamlined process can increase customer experience and leave customers with a good impression, which in turn strengthens loyalty and decreases the risk of payment issues in the future.

Collections teams may have been overlooked in the past as a strategically essential function, often reflected in their resource allocation. But, this perspective is changing. Establishing an efficient and customer-centric accounts receivable (A/R) process won’t just benefit a company’s cash flow but also the customer experience.

Importance of Empathy and Relationships in Accounting

The automated collection process is always evolving. According to Carlos Vega, empathy and personal touch in B2B collection processes play an important role in building strong bonds between the company and its customers. This relationship is subsequently essential to the growth and success of the business. With empathy at the forefront of customer interactions, brands can create a unique connection with their clients, thereby creating trust and understanding.

By ensuring that each team member demonstrates empathy towards customers, it will create a more comfortable environment for customers when interacting with the company. The impact that empathy has goes beyond the financial ecosystem; it helps the company understand every customer on a deeper level and pay attention to the customer's personalized needs. Accountants possessing excellent communication skills and the ability to comprehend clients' perspectives bring added value to the table. As automation takes over routine manual tasks, accountants who can establish trust, provide valuable insights, and genuinely listen to clients' concerns become indispensable.

Shortcomings of Traditional A/R Process

The unreliability of traditional A/R processes can significantly hamper customer experiences, one of the major shortcomings. In the conventional A/R approach, manual execution of every task, coupled with scattered paperwork and disjointed communication among finance teams, leads to customer dissatisfaction, errors, and avoidable delays. Manual processes prevents A/R teams from being able to provide customers with real-time payment information and personalized messaging. There’s always room for mistakes, such as inaccurate invoices, misappropriation of funds, and data loss. These errors can negatively impact and disrupt A/R team's workflows.

Primarily, traditional accounts receivable (A/R) processes are antiquated methods that every organization within the financial ecosystem should have transitioned away from by now. With its prominence in errors, the traditional A/R process can dent any organization's reputation as it creates an avenue for distrust between customers and the organization. In order to avoid any form of error or misunderstanding between the customers and the organization, it is essential to move towards a more automated system that is not error-prone like the traditional processes. Using an automated system creates a smooth and reliable A/R process that elevates customer experience and retention while also helping the company maintain healthy cash flow.

Automation of A/R Processes

Tesorio, a leading player in financial technology, offers a suite of A/R automation features that revolutionize the collection landscape. By seamlessly integrating with existing systems, Tesorio streamlines processes, reduces manual intervention, and ensures accuracy in payment management. Through automation, companies can focus more on customer relationships and less on administrative burdens. Utilizing Tesorio, every finance team can pay more attention to their client relationships as opposed to constantly chasing payments and focusing on the administrative side of the business.

With Tesorio, businesses can sit back and relax knowing that their A/R processes are working effectively to strengthen customer relationships and experiences while transforming their cash management from an old-school process to a successful automated system.

Best Practices and Benefits of Automation for Customer Experience

Leading companies, like Box, have experienced firsthand the transformative capabilities of Tesorio's Cash Flow Performance platform. Not only does it exert influence on their financial framework, but it also ensures they retain and maintain customer relationships. Trailblazing businesses outshine competitors who have yet to integrate a cash flow solution.

In the A/R automation industry, the most renowned brands like Box have seen and tested the power of Tesorio’s automation system and the impact it could have on their financial ecosystem, as well as ensuring that they retain and maintain customer relationships. These brands are at the forefront when it comes to their comparison with competitors that have not adopted an A/R solution. With its personalized dunning techniques, Tesorio's can completely tailor communication to each customer, ensuring that every customer experience is personalized. This process has improved the brands tremendously, transforming the traditional A/R process to be more proactive and strategic.

For example, Box has leveraged Tesorio’s A/R automation system to upgrade its collection process. Using Tesorio’s personalized and automated dunning campaigns, Box has been able to strategically reduce overdue payments. Tailoring to each customer's needs and preferences, they've elevated their customer experience, underscoring the pivotal role of A/R automation in enhancing experience, relationships, and retention.

Using personalized dunning and automated reminders, companies can build an efficient finance function that will continue to build trust and rapport with their customers. Tesorio’s A/R automation can help retain both old and new customers and improve collection processes while also enjoying the benefits of enhanced customer communication.

Conclusion

Improving customer relationships using automated collection processes is an endeavor that every company that wishes to improve its customer experience ought to consider.

With the help of Tesorio, both old and new companies can transform their traditional A/R processes, while enhancing accuracy and improving their cash flow.

To learn how you can accelerate your collections while building strong customer relationships, request to see Tesorio in action.