If you run a subscription business that cannot bundle or tailor its services/products, you’re going to miss out on revenue opportunities.
Customers demand a convenient experience today, which means offering the right services, products and features in a user-friendly manner.
Consequently, you need an agile system to manage each process, and when it comes to billing, you should aim to offer easily customisable subscriptions to please your customers, and make life easier for your sales team.
Going digital
To turn that agile system idea into reality, you need to go with an automated approach that is highly flexible.
A big part of this will be the use of subscription management and billing software. When you use flexible, sophisticated software like Billforward, you can streamline your billing operations and delight your customers with subscription options the exactly meet your their needs making and also making converting prospects much easier for your sales team.
This was the case for Docker, just one of our happy customers. They required an agile subscription management platform, one where they could model products and pricing plans without restrictions, and also integrate with other software systems. With Billforward, they didn’t need to develop or maintain their own in-house billing system – they had the perfect solution right out of the box.
A flexible billing platform not only makes complex tasks like migrating customers between subscription plans straightforward, but automation saves your employees significant time and resources.
Below, we look at four ideas worth considering to customise subscriptions help you become more customer-centric:
1. Discounts and Free Trials
Whether is is a free trial, free shipping, a discounted rate for a limited period or a volume discount to incentive greater usage- they all act as a great marketing tool for bringing in new customers.
Due to the flexibility offered by Billforward, your sales and marketing teams have the ability to dream up unique offers that can be tweaked per customer.
2. Ability to upgrade and downgrade
Customers hate being locked into a service that they don't really use. It is far better to allow a customer to downgrade their service than to lose them altogether.
In the current landscape, it’s essential your client base has the ability to alter their subscription when needed. For instance, a customer might need to reduce the features they require in an effort to cut costs, or they could be looking to migrate to a plan that covers more user accounts.
3. Cover complex billing needs
If you are have enterprise customers the are likely to have very specific requirements. With a versatile billing platform like Billforward, you can model the exact contract terms that you have with a customer - including pre-programmed changes from year to year.
Additionally, you can easily migrate customers so they can be effortlessly moved around between different plans when needed.
4. Pricing - iterate, iterate, iterate!
Getting the pricing right is imperative for your SaaS business. To put together a successful pricing strategy, it’s highly recommended to perform various price testing scenarios. For example, A/B-testing allows you to offer the same subscription package across two different plans, but with each separated by differing marketing conditions and pricing.
Even once you have found what you think is the right pricing this should be reviewed every few months.
With Billforward in place, you can easily run and analyse these tests. You can also migrate customers to bring them onto a standard price.
Adapting is necessary
A subscription SaaS business has to adapt, use the latest technology, and keep their customers at the forefront of their thoughts. A billing system helps to do this – and more. By doing all the work for you, such as fine-tuning subscriptions and contracts, Billforward can help your company achieve all of its goals.
Why not book a discovery call with one of our billing experts and see how we can help you meet your subscription goals!