We have an internal subscription management system that is a live database that runs with our e-commerce sites – this requires to be synced with any direct debit provider to ensure that the current status of any individual direct debit agreement is up to date. Ensuring that this can dovetail with a third party provider was critical in our decision making process.
The option of both an online portal and SFTP site to provide live status reports, banking reports and payment reconciliations was a key driver in making our decision to work with DFC – the set up of these access points was swift and the dashboard reporting in particular is clear, intuitive and concise.
It is key that the communications received by the consumers for our publishers’ products are branded and in keeping with the rest of the brand output. Setting up branded letters, wording and imagery was feasible once we were on board and ensures that there is limited scope for confusion when customers receive such communications from DFC on behalf of our publishing clients.
Efficient working practices are critical to ensuring our customer service team are able to provide the level of service that we have become known for and pride ourselves in giving. As a business to ensure that there is cohesion between two separate systems we have implemented a number of new working practices and reporting standards. These ensures that we remain in control of the processes driving our internal CRM system.
As a partner to Intermedia, DFC are able to deliver a reporting suite that enables us to stay abreast of the status of payments, easily manage new orders and alterations to details internally on behalf of our clients – and critically ensure that the integration with our customer relation management tools is simple and effective.
The initial set up of the relationship, along with the reporting suite and online access was seamless, with the functionality of the back end system critical to ensure visibility, accountability and most importantly accuracy of the collection process. Intermedia have clients utilising DFC’s Service User Number (SUN) with a mix of clients who use their own SUN – we cover both eventualities and DFC have worked with us to ensure that in either case the processes remain streamlined.
Our clients who utilise the DFC Service User Number have the opportunity to create a unique and branded landing page to facilitate order processing, with the addition of promotional coding allowing our clients to target both their retention and acquisition marketing campaigns accordingly.
Having worked with DFC since June 2014, our clients have seen the benefits of DFC and Intermedia managing their direct debit collections. In our industry, like so many others where customer retention is heavily reliant on trust, customer service and brand loyalty the relationship we hold with DFC is critical and we have been very pleased with the progress in our first 5 months. – J Wren