How to develop a great customer onboarding strategy for small business

Developing a great onboarding strategy requires more than just improving business processes; it requires rethinking the whole business plan to deliver an easy-to-digest experience for the customers. If you are an executive at a payment processing bank championing better onboarding for customers, we’re sure you would like to know which areas you should focus on. In this blog post, we will talk about the components that make up a great onboarding strategy for small businesses.

Simple pricing

For small businesses, an important factor to consider is the pricing strategy. Small business owners prefer easy-to-understand rates. They want to be able to assess the cost of processing payments quickly. Within the current onboarding processes at many major banks, a lot of time and effort is invested into educating the customer about how rates work, and helping them figure out what their monthly cost will be. Different rates for qualified and non-qualified and various transaction fees makes it complicated for the merchants to figure out their cost. This is a waste of time and a great hassle for the merchants. In order to deliver a better onboarding experience for small businesses, banks must begin by reevaluating their pricing model.

Recent newcomers to the payments industry, Square and Stripe, are offering uniform rate for all cards with no monthly fees. They have been successful at getting small businesses to convert because of their pricing model. Small businesses are willing to switch even though it may cost them a little more, because it removes complexity. A single, standard rate for all credit cards makes onboarding easier and faster, because the merchants can easily figure out the cost of payment processing.

Short application time frames

Another key factor to consider is the long wait period for authorization. Switching payment processor is an important event for a small business because many of them depend on their credit card transactions for the majority of their income. This dependence on credit card transactions is made even more important for small businesses owners because their livelihoods often depend on their business. A long onboarding period prolongs the anxiety of switching processors and gives merchants time to second-guess their decision. Therefore, reducing the time period to obtain authorization is particularly important for targeting small businesses.

Small business owners care about having certainty in their business. A great onboarding strategy delivers a sense of security. Introduce a simple rate plan to help them get a better idea of their cost and reduce long authorization periods to reduce the anxiety of switching processors.