The veterinarian services industry in the US has experienced rapid growth over the last few years. Fueled by the growing pet insurance sector and increasing pet ownership, its market size currently stands at $61 billion.
As a veterinary software provider, one of the most valuable add-ons you can offer your clients today is an integrated payment processing solution. For one, there is a growing demand among consumers for quick and secure payment options that go beyond credit cards.
Plus, manual account reconciliation is a huge waste of time and energy. Having an integrated payment processing solution, on the other hand, boosts efficiency and reduces the chances of human error that often accompany manual data entry. But those aren’t the only benefits.
In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into how veterinary software providers can sell their payment solutions to their users (i.e. vet clinics) and why this can be greatly beneficial for them.
Let’s get started.
TL;DR
- Integrated payment processing solutions offer several benefits for vet clinics including improved customer experience, better security, fewer errors, smoother sales cycles, and easier cross-selling.
- To sell your payment services effectively, make sure to put the word out about your new offerings, train your sales team well, set up incentive schemes, have a robust strategy in place, and time it right.
- Make it easy for vet clinics to adopt your payment solution by offering the features that make the most sense for them. These include recurring billing, cards on file, paperless receipts, simplified bank reconciliation, security and compliance, and an intuitive interface.
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Why Encourage Users to Adopt Your Payment Processing Services
It’s easy to see that monetizing payments can create an additional revenue stream for SaaS businesses. And by enabling vet clinics to process payments through their platform, practice management software providers can actually increase their product usage and reduce churn.
But that’s not all. On their own merits, the right payment processing solutions can offer a host of benefits for veterinary practices.
1. Better customer experience
It’s a stressful time for pet owners when their pets have to undergo surgery or other in-clinic procedures. The least you can do to ease their experience is to offer a number of convenient payment options including credit and debit cards, online payments, digital wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay, ACH transfers, eChecks, and recurring billing.
Mobile payments including text-to-pay options are particularly well-suited for farm calls, exam rooms, and curbside checkouts. Plus, contactless payments provide a safer environment for customers to make payments and give them peace of mind.
A good payment processing solution can streamline checkout and improve the customer experience. It can also give your users a solid edge over their competitors.
2. Improved security
Data breaches are commonplace in today’s digital world and can be a cause of serious financial losses for vet clinics or their clients. No wonder businesses these days are greatly concerned about their security and that of their customers.
Payment processing solutions that offer security features like tokenization, end-to-end encryption, and PCI DSS compliance keep customers’ data secure and protect them from any possible breaches.
3. Fewer errors
Manual cash counting, data entry, or reconciliation can allow errors to creep in, especially on a busy day. However, an integrated payment processing solution ensures the accurate recording of transactions, regardless of their volumes.
4. Smoother sales cycles
An integrated payment solution improves liquidity for vet clinics by eliminating complicated payment procedures. There is no need to enter payment details repeatedly, thereby minimizing the chances of errors and associated payment rejections or chargebacks.
Customers can make payments using their saved payment details with a single click and checkout with ease. Also, splitting up payments into manageable sums not only offers greater convenience for customers but also ensures that vet clinics have a consistent cash flow.
5. Easier cross-selling
An integrated payment solution improves the chances of cross-selling for vet practices and opens up avenues for new business opportunities.
For many families, pet care is just as crucial as healthcare. With an integrated payment solution, vet clinics can offer pet wellness payment plans to their customers which ensures their pets have access to proper care while keeping the costs predictable. This can play a major role in boosting retention rates and building strong customer relationships.
What Are the Best Ways to Sell Your Payment Services to Vet Practices?
To grow your revenue stream, you must try to direct as many of your user payments through your platform as possible. This will help you create a strong bottom line. Below are some of the best ways to accomplish this.
1. Communicate
For starters, make sure you put the word out about your new service offerings effectively. If you don’t tell your users, they’ll never know.
Advertise your payment offerings on the most visible areas of your website and use other channels of promotion such as your social media accounts, blog, and even paid ads. This will not just help to educate your users about your payment offerings, but also upsell to them down the line.
2. Train your staff
The human touch never disappoints and shouldn’t be kept far from the action. Your sales team has a major role to play when it comes to encouraging users to start using your integrated payment system. See to it that they have:
- The right amount of technical knowledge and skills
- Ample resources and support to help them
- Talking points about the most important features like security and convenience
- Ability to subtly probe the user and understand their needs
- Ability to anticipate questions from the user
- Understanding of the competition and ability to position your services distinctly
3. Set up a rewards system
Make sure your salespeople are highly motivated to upsell your payment services proactively. This may require you to mobilize them through a well-established rewards and incentives scheme.
Make your sales targets more transparent, simple, and realistic so that they feel confident enough to have a go at them. Also, consider setting up a dashboard for your team that enables them to track their monthly or quarterly progress.
4. Establish a strategy
Have a well-thought-out strategy in place if you’re planning to upsell payments to your existing clients. Think about which clients may benefit the most from this service—perhaps those of a certain size, using a certain feature, or a certain credit card processing volume.
Then target only those customers with your communications rather than resorting to mass marketing. Personalize your pitches based on their usage patterns or past data to increase conversions.
5. Timing is key
Be mindful of the user journey and try to assess at which points they may require a payment solution. For example, once a vet clinic has set up its clients on their practice management system and it’s time to bill them, you could introduce your new payment offerings to them. Likewise, offer your new clients rewards or discount coupons for first-time purchases through the platform.
6. Showcase testimonials
On your website, display user testimonials from people that are already using your payment platform. Let others know of their positive experiences with your integrated payment services to encourage more users to enlist.
Also, create case studies about your past customers’ problems and how your solution helped resolve them. Having social proof is always a great idea to generate confidence among potential buyers by spreading positive word of mouth.
How to Make It Easier for Vet Clinics to Adopt Your Payment Processing Services
To encourage more and more users to adopt your integrated payment offerings, see to it that your solution offers the functions that are most essential for veterinary clinics.
1. Recurring payment schedules
For pet parents who have purchased wellness plans or need to refill prescriptions periodically, recurring billing automates the process and greatly simplifies payments. Recurring billing also enables pet owners to pay for expensive services like surgeries in smaller installments which enhances the customer experience as well.
2. Cards on file
For repeat customers, storing card info securely on file allows vet clinics to simplify the checkout process. With this, customers don’t need to enter payment info every time they visit. They can simply charge the card with a single click. Saving cards on file also allows them to make payments over the phone and send over a remote signature for verification.
3. Paperless receipts
With integrated payment processing, vet practices can store receipts electronically. These can even be searched by patient name, date, ID, or any other field. This allows your users to go paperless and get more efficient with their record-keeping.
4. Simplified reconciliation
With integrated payments, users can forget all about manually adding up batch reports or analyzing discrepancies at the end of the month. A good veterinary payment processing software should be able to make reconciliation a breeze by producing real-time reports.
5. Security and compliance
An effective payment solution for vet clinics is one that is adequately shielded against data breaches and fraud. It should also comply with regulatory frameworks like PCI DSS, so customers can rest easy knowing their payment data is safe.
6. Intuitive interface
A software product with an intuitive look and feel can make your users’ lives easy. Make sure you’re offering an excellent design and a streamlined workflow. Most importantly, the software should be easy enough for people to use with minimal training.
Final Words
As such, ISVs simply can’t afford to ignore the growing needs of the veterinary industry. The good news is that vet software providers looking to upsell payments to their users can do so easily with Stax Connect. Build a complete payments ecosystem from scratch in as little as 30 days by leveraging our relationship with the world’s leading sponsor bank.
Besides providing all the essential features discussed above, Stax Connect will also streamline risk management for you and our pre-built enrollment platform will ensure that end users can start taking payments within just 20 minutes of getting started. We also support a variety of payment methods including cards, ACH payments, invoicing, recurring billing, text-to-pay, and split payments.
Contact us to learn how you can start monetizing payments today.
