Ron Kinkade
Life is hectic. Sometimes the question may arise if our phones simplify our lives or make them more hectic. In reality they do both. It’s up to us to use our phones as a helpful tool to organize the clutter and not as a distraction from keeping our days in check.
Users Respond To Text Alerts
According to the Pew Research center, the average text message user sends or receives approximately 41 messages on a typical day, while with young adults the average is higher, sending or receiving over 100 messages a day. Needless to say, if a text pops up on the phone, most people will take a look at it.
Although your phone is by no means a personal assistant, it can be. That’s where texting notifications comes in. Text notifications have become an increasingly powerful tool for organization. One clear, well timed text notification can cut through the noise and keep you on track in an instant.
Notifications Are Pervasive
Text messaging services for businesses have become a critical component of community and customer outreach for a variety of companies and services spanning American culture. Government agencies such as the CDC (Center For Disease Control) and the NIH (National Institutes of Health) have issued guidance for text messaging alerts. As a nation, we receive Amber Alerts as a push notification on our smartphones so that collectively we can help those in need.
Notifications Get Attention
Text and push notifications have become so important to smartphone users, they’ve become hard to avoid even when we try. According to a study conducted by researchers at Florida State University, “Mobile phones can disrupt attention performance even if one does not interact with the device. As mobile phones become integrated into more and more tasks, it may become increasingly difficult for people to set their phones aside and concentrate fully on the task at hand, whatever it may be.”
With that attachment in mind, and the pervasiveness by which smartphone notifications have swept through our society, it only makes sense to incorporate text and push notifications into your business regimen if you haven’t already done so.
Notifications And Accounts Receivable
One of the smartest areas of business to implement notifications is in Accounts Receivable. Gone are the days of setting out our bills on the kitchen counter and writing out checks for different accounts receivable accounts to pop in the mail the next day. Instead, most consumers pay their bills in a variety of methods, to include through a smartphone app, by phone, on a website, or through autopay.
Sometimes bills get lost in the shuffle. Sometimes consumers are so distracted by other details of life, they forget about their bill or they remember a little late. But they are responsive to text or push notifications.
A Gentle Reminder
Notifications are one of the best ways to get the attention of that customer who may be distracted by something else and has forgotten to pay his/her bill, whether that customer be a person or another company. They serve as a gentle, non-intrusive way to nudge that customer and say, “Hey don’t forget about this account.”
An Easy Way To Stay Organized
They are also a simple, low effort way to keep customers organized so that bill pay becomes routine and automatic. By sending customers notifications that their bill is due soon, and additional notifications when the bill is now due or is late, a customer can stay on track with their bill paying and spend less time worrying about keeping those important dates in check on their own.
Increase In Responsiveness
Notifications can help Accounts Receivable departments bring in payments more quickly, too. Instead of just relying on traditional mail invoices, or even email reminders, text notifications are instant. According to the Pew Research Center, text message reminders result in earlier responses than email reminders. In the long run, individuals still respond to email as well, but texting leads to quicker response time.
Texting Is On The Rise
Another reason to implement a text or push notification practice in important departments like Accounts Receivable is that text users are young and more representative ethnically of the diversity in our country. So, as people grow older, the population of heavy text users will only get larger, not shrink. This has long term positive implications for the effectiveness of a well placed text or push notification practice within Accounts Receivable.
The Notification/Smartphone App Combo
One of the fastest ways to improve Accounts Receivable payment rates is by using a combination of text or push notifications with a smartphone app. If your customers have an easy way to pay their bill within minutes, no matter where they are, they’re much more likely to immediately respond to a payment needed reminder just after receiving the notification. If they can pop on the app and make a payment, they’ll be less likely to put it off or forget than if they had to wait until they had enough time or attention to log on to a website or pay a bill by paper.