Record, Remind and Payments- a full stack model that ticks all the right boxes for merchants
Diwali 2020: Harman Lal Meena, a mobile recharge shop owner in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar area was chasing 25 customers who hadn’t paid him after getting recharges done.
Diwali 2021: Harman Lal Meena is still chasing 43 customers who haven’t paid him since last three months.
Ask any retail store selling on credit in India, names will change, but the story will be similar. Getting credit back is the pressing problem no 1 for retail SMBs, without a doubt. The problem is acute for neighbourhood stores where transactions are more acquaintance based. For shopkeepers, it’s a tough dilemma- stop selling on credit and you let go off your loyal customers, allow credit and you enter the endless cycle of waiting for them to pay up.
For customers, it’s easy. Buy the product and promise to pay at a later date. These promises are hard to keep though- sometimes it’s fund crunch, sometimes forgetfulness or lack of a record and sometimes sheer lack of intent to pay.
Prior to using OkCredit, Pawan Kumar who runs the Sawant Kirana store at Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh says that customers usually said that they’ll pay up in a week or 15 days but there have been times when he had outstanding for close to 3 months. With a list of 365 total customers, it used to become an arduous task for him to pick out defaulters and then spend more than an hour everyday calling and reminding them to pay.
No wonder there are memes and cartoons made on shopkeepers chasing customers.
Reminders are the best way to solve this problem. There have been visible benefits for merchants who have used OkCredit’s reminder feature. Merchants can use automated reminders, custom reminders or bulk reminders, to prod their customers to pay. They can choose a frequency of these reminders and the messages can be sent via both SMS and Whatsapp. Bulk reminders are particularly useful for large merchants who have a long list of customers they need to remind at one go.
In other words, reminders take care of a very significant aspect of a merchant’s daily life. They prevent him from transforming into a recovery agent every now and then.
That reminders have worked well for our merchants can be understood from the fact that more than 40,000 SMS reminders and 2,50,000 Whatsapp reminders get sent on a daily basis. Raju Tanwar of Apna General Store at Chandigarh says that he has seen more customers coming in for payments, that too within ten days, since he started actively using the reminder feature on OkCredit.
“ Earlier, If I forgot reminding and calling a customer, the money was lost. Now, I have set reminder dates for every customer. Once they see the message, they usually turn up within 3–5 days. Automatic reminders have made my life a lot easier and I can now concentrate on my shop rather than remembering dues for every customer”, says Tanwar.
But reminders are just a bridge between the merchant and the credit actually coming back. Reminders ensure that the customer is aware of his dues. Whenever this customer wants to pay, it’s the payment mechanism that will close the loop. Simply put, for a successful recovery, a payment medium in addition to reminders is as important. This medium could be online or offline.
OkCredit’s online payment option is helping scores of merchants receive payments directly from their customers. Customers can use any of the popular payment methods-UPI, Netbanking, Cards and wallets to pay their merchants. The biggest advantage for merchants accepting digital payments through the OkCredit app is automatic reconciliation of accounts. This essentially means that accounts get automatically adjusted once payments are made without the need for the merchant to manually make a correction.
Selling on credit shouldn’t be a headache. OkCredit’s full stack approach of record, remind and payments ensures that merchants can do what they set out to do- grow their business and delight customers in the process.
