How To Collect Payments from Customers

If your business’s online payment collection process is a mess (and, in case you’re looking for help), don’t worry! You just ended up at the right place. In this blog, we will go through all you need to know while collecting payments from your customers. From tips and strategies to a how-to guide, we’ve got you covered.
And guess what, we’ll teach you how to collect payments from your customers in under just a few minutes.

Tips and Strategies to Effectively Collect Payments from Customers

Accepting payment efficiently from customers is crucial when it comes to the financial health of a business. Here are a few tips to streamline the payment collection process.

1. Craft clear and Concise Invoices

Ensure your invoices are clear and contain all necessary details like due dates, payment methods accepted, and late payment penalties. One effective approach to avoid mistakes and guarantee the uniformity of your invoices is to use a template. Free Excel invoice templates are widely available online, offering a simple, organized way to create your invoices. They usually include pre-defined fields for all the essential data, saving you time and reducing room for error. The best part is you can get these templates from a free invoice generator, which is very user-friendly even if you are not technically inclined. You should also clearly communicate the payment terms and policies to the customers to avoid future disputes.

2. Offer Multiple Convenient Payment Options

Include credit cards, PayPal, online bank transfers, and mobile payment apps. You can use an online payment gateway and other invoicing software to facilitate seamless online payment.

3. Automate the Invoices

You can use invoicing software to streamline the invoicing process, sending out reminders and rack payments. For instance, if there is a subscription-based service, set up recurring invoices to automate regular payments.

4. Send Timely Invoices and Follow Up Promptly

This is pretty straightforward. Be prompt! Send the invoices immediately after delivering the goods or services. Also, set up a follow-up system to send reminders for overdue payments.

5. Personalized Communication Builds Trust

Just put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Would you rather be treated as a stranger or one among the lot? Be polite while reminding them to pay and acknowledge payments as soon as they are made.

6. Offer Discounts and Incentives

Discounts for early payments might encourage customers to pay sooner. Plus, implement loyalty programs that reward regular customers with discounts on future purchases.

7. Enforce Clear Late Payment Policies

Be as transparent as possible with your clients when it comes to payment policies. State late payment fees in your terms and conditions to discourage delayed payments.

8. Screen Customers for Reliable Transactions

Always perform credit card checks on customers to assess their credit card worthiness when there is a large transaction or long-term contract. Maybe consider requesting a deposit or advance payment for high-value orders or services.

9. Solid Contracts and Legal Support Matter

Have clear, legally binding contracts that outline payment terms, late fees, and consequences for non-payment. CLM software can help you stay on top of contracts throughout their entire lifecycle. If all else fails, be prepared to involve a collections agency to recover payments, as a last resort. If all else fails, be prepared to involve a collections agency to recover payments, as a last resort.

10. Regularly Review and Refine Processes

It is important to analyze bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Seek feedback from customers to understand their payment experience and make necessary adjustments.

How To Collect Payments From Customers — the Easy Way

Let’s take the example of SurveySparrow’s Stripe integration to understand better. We will walk you through our payment process. Follow these simple steps to collect payments online or accept credit card payments online for your business.

#1: Create your form/survey.

#2: Now that you’ve created the survey, select the “Payment” question type from the different question types in the “Build” section.

This is how the payment section will look on the survey.

#3: Connect to your existing Stripe account or set it up by filling in the necessary details on Stripe’s page. (We would suggest you get Stripe up and running before you start creating the survey.

#4: When the Stripe account is ready, enter all required details and authorize access to it.

#5: Once you’ve authorized access, you will be redirected back to the form.

#6: Now it’s time to enter the price you’re looking to get from each respondent. You can enter that manually or use Expressions to calculate your final amount. In case you’ve used Expressions in the form, enable ‘Use Expressions’ to display the final amount in your payment question.

#7: Pick the currency of your choice from the given dropdown list of 13 different currencies, and that’s it. Your survey, along with the payment question, is ready to be sent across!

Here’s an online order form that collects payments from customers…

Donut Order Form

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What Is A Payment Question Type?

In today’s day and age, when people’s attention spans are getting smaller and smaller, you can’t expect someone to take your survey and then make a payment separately. If your survey revolves around respondents paying for an event, product, or service, you gotta use a payment question type.

A payment question type facilitates a specific payment, using a third-party integration, directly from a survey itself. That means you don’t need to send a separate email to respondents to complete the payment, as it’s included right at the end of an ongoing survey where interested respondents can choose to pay.

Simple yet powerful, right?

Ways to Collect Feedback from Customers

Here are a few commonly used methods:

Credit and Debit Cards	Payments are made via electronic transfer using credit or debit cards.
Mobile Payments	Transactions are conducted through mobile payment apps on smartphones.
Online Payment Gateways	Secure online platforms (e.g., Stripe, PayPal) for accepting credit card and digital payments.
Direct Debit	Businesses withdraw funds directly from customers’ bank accounts on specific dates with customer approval.
Cash on Delivery (COD)	Customers pay for products upon delivery, combining online shopping with cash payments.

Importance of Making Payments Through Surveys

We talked about how customers get frustrated when they don’t get the option to pay directly from the survey. But is that it? Is that the only thing that makes payments through surveys crucial? Not exactly. Here are the 5 aspects of giving survey payments their importance:

Quick Functioning

Who doesn’t want to get work done quickly? Both your employees and survey respondents want that. Including a payment question to accept credit card payments online is a surefire way of doing it. Employees can then focus on other essential work rather than sending payment links to individual respondents, and respondents can wrap up the survey once and for all.

That’s a perfect example of a win-win scenario. Don’t you think?

Structured Data Collection

When payments are collected from the survey, it’s always easier for the survey takers to manage the entire respondent data, from those who made payments to those who didn’t. This serves the right purpose while designing new survey campaigns as you now know what piques a respondent’s interest the most. Basically, a payment question type facilitates better targeting for all your survey campaigns.

Positive Customer Experience

Well, this is pretty obvious, isn’t it? People’s attention spans are going lower and lower with each passing day, and as such, most of them won’t be thrilled to see a separate email asking them to make a payment.

If they’re attempting your survey fully, they would really like the idea of paying through the survey itself. And that would take their experience level with your brand to the next level. Who doesn’t want that?

Growing Brand Image

When your CX (Customer Experience) goes up, your brand’s image will follow the course. That’s pretty much obvious. In the eyes of the respondents, your brand knows how to make their life easier even in the smallest possible way, which goes a long way in upping your company’s image in their minds. That eventually drives sustained and organic growth.

Proactiveness

Accepting payments online through a survey means the organization is proactive. Proactive in realizing what the customer wants, proactive in keeping their data structured, and proactive in working towards sustained growth. Using a survey tool that facilitates payments, like SurveySparrow, might be a small step, but it indicates if a company is a front-runner or one from the pack.

Must-Do’s Before Including The Payment Question Type

Accepting payments online is great, as it’s necessary in today’s fast-changing world. And collecting payments using a survey is… well, nothing short of fantastic. Fantastic for the respondents as they don’t have to visit another page or website to make a payment, and fantastic for the survey takers as they know the interested parties of their product/offering/seminar right away.

Win-win, right? Not before you give out this necessary information to all potential respondents;

Give a disclaimer about the payment question type in your survey right at the start.
Clearly state what respondent data you will store during the payment.
State how it’s completely alright to skip the payment question while still attempting the survey.
If you’re using skip logic, clearly mention that respondent answers will determine if they get a payment question.
State how third-party payment facilitators, like Stripe in SurveySparrow’s case, don’t store credit card details or other sensitive information or that they use encryption to store all data.
If there are service charges for making a payment, you must inform respondents beforehand.
In case of payment failures, mention the estimated days by which it’ll be credited back.
Mention how your team is present to assist and support respondents.

FAQs On Payments & Integrations

Directly jumping into the questions here:

1 What payment methods are available in the payment question?

The payment methods are what Stripe allows as major credit cards for payments. You can refer to the list of supported cards.

2 Does Stripe collect any information about my survey?

No, Stripe only collects specific details about the payments in an encrypted form and does not have access to survey-related data.

3 Does SurveySparrow store credit card numbers?

SurveySparrow never saves or stores credit card numbers submitted by survey respondents.

4 Is SurveySparrow a payment gateway or payment processor?

No, SurveySparrow is a pretty awesome survey tool that integrates with Stripe, so you can easily log in to it and seamlessly collect payments from surveys.

5 Does my bank account have to be from any specific country to facilitate payments?

Your bank account should be located in the same country as your Stripe account. Stripe is available in 25 countries currently, including the United States, Canada, the UK, France, Australia, and more. You can check out the global availability before you get started.

On You Go!

If you have some idea about how to collect payments from customers, you now know everything about it. From the how to the why. All of what we discussed is super important if you want to include payment questions while enhancing all respondents’ experience.

On you go, then. It’s time you start incorporating this question type in your surveys. And for any help, literally for the slightest of help, contact us. We’re here to make your work easier.