Talk to Your Customers About Switching to Online Payments

As you're already aware, accepting online payments from your customers is an important part of any business and a key feature of ServiceCore. 

Traditionally, your customers have been paying by cash or check, but both of those methods are time consuming for everyone involved and harder to track which can make accounting a pain.

If you've set a business goal for yourself to move as many customers as possible over to paying online, either via credit card or ACH, but you're unsure how to start that conversation with them, we have you covered! 

Check out our recommended conversation prompts below and then follow the instructions for exporting a list of customers to talk with.

Before You Start

Here are a few things to know before you continue:

• In order to offer online payments to your customers, you'll need to apply for a merchant account through Fiserv (formerly CloverConnect). To learn more, please reach out to servicecorepay@servicecore.com.
• You do not need to be on the Pro Plan to offer online payments to your customers, but you and your customers won't have access to the Customer Portal mentioned below. To learn more about the Pro Plan and its Customer Portal feature, please reach out to customersuccess@servicecore.com.

Introduce Online Payments to Your Customers

If you're just starting to accept payments by credit card or ACH and you want to announce these new options to your customers, here's a suggested talk track for over-the-phone conversations/voicemail messages plus an email template.

TIP: Adjust the examples to match your business tone of voice and wording.

Talk Track for Phone Calls & Voicemails

"Hi [Customer], I wanted to let you know that we're now taking credit card and ACH payments for all of our rentals and service types. This means you can easily pay your invoice online with a credit or debit card or directly from your bank account. It's super quick and you don't have to think about mailing us a check or dropping off cash during a busy week. Do you mind providing me with your card information so I can save it to your profile for later use?"

Email Template

"Hello [Customer]!

We're excited to let you know that we're now accepting secure online payments to make things easier and faster for you!

Your can now pay your invoices by credit/debit card or directly from a checking account (ACH). No more mailing us checks or stopping by in person! All you have to do is go to a link in the invoice we send you and pay it online within minutes.

We use a secure payment system that protects your information and you'll get a receipt emailed to you once the payment has been submitted to us.

What's even better is that we also have a way to save credit/debit cards and banking information in your profile and automate payments on your open invoices. All you have to do is call our office to provide us with your information over the phone or log into your Customer Portal and enter/save your details there.

Sincerely,

[Business Name]"

Handle Your Customers' Objections to Paying Online

Depending on the demographics of your customers some of them may be hesitant to hand over their banking details after years of paying by cash or check.

This is totally understandable, but shouldn't keep you from modernizing your business processes and keeping up with the way the rest of the world does business with each other.

Below are a few concerns your customers may have and examples of how you might want to respond to each.

Objection: I don't like giving my credit/debit/ACH info over the phone/via email.

Response (if you're NOT on Pro Plan): In that case, I have some good news for you: you can drop by the office at any time and give us the info in person so we can save it in your profile. Do you need our address or hours to plan on doing that?

Response (if you ARE on Pro Plan): In that case, I have some good news for you: when you're ready to pay your next invoice, you can log into your Customer Portal on your computer and save your info directly in there without us ever having to see it.

Objection: I don't want my credit/debit/ACH info saved in my profile.

Response: While we do prefer saving your payment details, we don't require it so that's not a problem. When you get your next invoice there will be a link you can use to submit a one-time payment to us without saving your payment details. If you have a previous invoice handy I can show you where to find it, how does that sound? 

Objection: I don't know how secure your system is. Can my billing details get hacked?

Response: I totally understand your concern around that. We use a payment processor called Fiserv that handles the actual transfer of money from your bank (both cards and ACH) to ours and they're certified to meet key federal and state regulations to ensure they're compliant with national security standards.

The platform we use to store your payment details is called ServiceCore and they're also compliant with national security standards to ensure the privacy and safety of your information, even from us! Once your details are saved to your profile we can only ever see the last four digits of your card info or bank account.

Objection: It's just easier to mail/drop off a check/cash OR I just don't see the point in changing what we've always done.

Response: I get that; you're already have a routine set up that works for you and sometimes change is difficult, even if it makes things easier for you in the long run. 

I do think it's worth considering the fact that paying online means not driving to us to pay an invoice; no waiting to see if a check gets lost in the mail and then more waiting on us to actually deposit the check and then even more waiting for the funds to be pulled from your account.

Some of our other customers were also unsure about doing this at first, but now they love how quick and simple it is. It also helps us stay more organized around your billing and gets your jobs/services handled faster. Would you mind testing it out for an invoice or two and then we can see if switching back to cash/check is better?

Export Your Check- and Cash-Paying Customers

When you're ready to talk to your customers about converting from physical to digital payments, you'll need to first figure out which of your customers are currently paying with cash or check (assuming that they don't ALL pay with cash or check already).

We've created an Excel spreadsheet with formula equations to seamlessly match check- and cash-paying customers with their contact information so you can easily reach out to them. 

To use our spreadsheet template, just follow the instructions below:

1. Click here to open our spreadsheet template. 
2. If you have access to Google Sheets and prefer to work with that spreadsheet tool, make a personal copy of the spreadsheet. Your copy will open in your Google Sheets view and you can close the original browser tab.
   
   
   
   If you don't have access to Google Sheets or prefer to work with Microsoft's Excel program instead, download a copy of our spreadsheet template. You'll need to open it on your device through your Downloads folder.
   
   
3. Once you have our spreadsheet template open, log into your ServiceCore account.
4. Click into your main "Accounting" section.
5. Click into "Payments".
6. Click on "Filter".
   
   
7. Click into Payment Method and select either "Cash" or "Check" to start. You'll come back and repeat the workflow for the other option you don't choose first.
   
   
8. In the Payment Date Range field, change the Start and End Date to cover the entire year.
   
   
9. Click "Export to Excel". The file will auto-download to your device.
   
   
10. Repeat Steps 6-9 for the second option you didn't choose earlier (cash or check).
    
    TIP: Rename both files 'cash' and 'check' so you know which file has what information.
11. Click into your main "Customers" section.
12. Click "Export to Excel". The file will be sent to your email address in your profile.
    
    
13. In the email you received, click the download link to save the file to your device.
14. Open your copy of our spreadsheet template and click on "File".
15. Click on "Import".
    
    
16. Click into the "Upload" section.
17. Click on "Browse".
    
    
18. Select either the 'cash' or 'check' file you downloaded from ServiceCore.
19. Change the Import Location to 'Insert new sheet(s)'.
20. Click on "Import data".
    
    
21. Repeat Steps 14-17 and select your downloaded customers list.
22. Repeat Steps 19 & 20 to import your customer data as a new sheet.
23. Click into the tab that has your imported customer data (it'll be named whatever you named your exported file) and copy all of the information.
24. Click into the "Customers" tab.
    
    
25. Click on cell A1 and paste your customer data into this tab.
26. Click into the tab that has your imported check or cash data (it'll be named whatever you named your exported file) and copy all of the information.
27. Click into the "Payments" tab.
    
    
28. Click on cell A1 and paste your check or cash data into this tab.
29. Click into the other tab that has your imported check or cash data that you didn't already copy/paste (it'll be named whatever you named your exported file) and copy all of the information, EXCEPT THE HEADER ROW.
30. Click into the "Payments" tab.
    
    
31. Scroll down to the first empty row after your previously pasted data, click on the first empty cell, and paste your check or cash data into this tab.

Now when you click into the "Summary" tab you'll see a list of all your check- and cash-paying customers without having to manually go through and figure out ServiceCore's customer IDs or duplicates across payment types.

The Summary tab uses Excel formulas to pull your data together. If you click on a cell, the formula will show instead of the actual piece of information. 

If you want to sort, filter, and/or copy the information in this list, you’ll need to replace the formulas with actual data first. Select all the cells, copy them, and then paste as values only. You’ll know it worked if you click on a cell and see just the information in the formula bar instead of the original formula.

If you have any questions, please reach out to our Support team through the chat widget on the bottom of this page or by sending an email to servicecorepay@servicecore.com!