Improving Your ASC's Bottom Line via Billing and Payment Options

By Scott McCollum

Adopting one or more of these 12 payment and billing services may match your customers' changing needs, while also generating more revenue from comparable business levels. In addition, many of these suggestions result in improved customer service.

1. Convenience Fees – Consider either a "No Fee to Biller" model using pre-set flat convenience fees collected by your processor to retain 100 percent of your billable amounts, or a "Biller Keeps the Fee" model to create a new revenue stream and forecast the positive impact to your bottom line.

2. Account Verification – Verify the accuracy of the customer's account information and likeliness of successful pay before establishing recurring payment plans to avoid costly and time-consuming setups or repeated returned payments.

3. Virtual Agents – Let computer-based algorithms handle payment options on qualifying account balances, leaving agents and customer service reps free for other tasks.

4. ACH – Accept payments via ACH and reduce your processing fees while increasing customer satisfaction through providing more efficient cash-management capabilities compared to traditional paper payments.

5. Cash Payments – Help your underbanked customers make payments and settle debts by accepting electronic cash payments – plus eliminate the risk of managing cash at your locations.

6. E-Billing (EBPP) – Reduce paper and postage costs by introducing e-billing and payment processing so customers can see their bills and pay online while also reducing your Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and operational costs.

7. Text payments – Customers like this emerging technology. It provides a convenient option for busy mobile-savvy people; they can receive bill reminders and authorize payment by text message.

8. PURLs for Personalized Payments – One-time-use personalized URLs encourage electronic payments from paper statements and invoices, so customers can quickly pay online while eliminating the need to create a profile or log into a public online payment portal.

9. Check 21 – Exchanging electronic images of checks means faster access to check payments and greater efficiency than physically transporting paper checks. Check 21 enables non-standard paper checks such as business checks to be converted to electronic images for processing.

10. Web Payment Forms & IVR – By providing a company branded web payment form or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone line for customers and debtors to self pay, the process of collecting on outstanding balances can be streamlined even further while offering 24/7 access.

11. Debit Cards Only – Consider the option of limiting payment card acceptance to validated debit cards only, effective for portfolios where access to credit is minimal or restricted.

12. Text Notifications – Bill and communicate with customers and debtors via SMS text for a quick, easy to set up, and low-cost service for outage notices or as a past-due payment reminder service.

Scott McCollum is president of BillingTree , a national on-demand payment processor. While supplies last, the company is offering free copies of Payments Power – a primer on how to increase your net profit 10 percent or more and improve cash flow. Limited to one copy per mailing address, offer details are available here .