Digital Receipts
New Route to Customer Engagement,
Convenience, and Better CX
Digital Receipts
New Route to Customer Engagement, Convenience, and Better CX
The writing is on the wall: the days when businesses gave paper receipts are drawing to an end. The reason? Retailers have found a more efficient, faster, and seamless way of documenting monetary transactions with their customers: Digital Receipts. Electronically-managed digital receipts have transformed the way these documents are organized, managed, and stored. Also, as digitization and sustainability become the new business norms, e-Receipts are finding their place under the sun.
Digital Receipts are becoming an essential component of post-purchase marketing program as the receipts deliver smooth post-purchase tracking experiences to retailers. As these green receipts go mainstream, they are empowering businesses to increase customer engagement and, in the long run, boost their bottom lines. This smarter and more engaging alternative to the paper receipt system is also customizable to include product recommendations, loyalty incentives, surveys, promotions, and more. With an optimized e-Receipt Solution – that is tailor-made for customer needs – businesses can implement a true omnichannel strategy, deliver the right content to their users, and ensure maximum engagement.
In this blog, we will unravel every facet of this new way of documenting financial transactions – by understanding what Digital Receipts are, why businesses must use them, and the advantages they bring on board.
What is a Digital Receipt?
Issued by businesses, digital receipts are sent directly to a customer’s phone or email. They are proof of payment that comes without a physical paper trail. This makes them more convenient and easier to preserve. It comprises an invoice number, the payment date, vendor name, the recipient’s account details, and the amount, besides marketing communication and feedback links.
Electronic Receipts are proving to be a huge convenience for consumers. The added advantage for marketers is that they can use electronic receipts to send out product recommendations and personalized messages and target customers better by gauging their purchase preferences and shopping patterns.
Many companies are hopping onto the digital receipt bandwagon because it helps them create a database of loyal customers. It’s also one of the most efficient ways to receive and store payment confirmations and do payment and receipt tracking. The pandemic saw the world shift towards digitization, and this propelled digital receipts to center stage.
Digital Receipts are the New Normal
There was a time when it was legally binding upon retailers to collect and collate physical paper copies of customer receipts as well as expenses incurred. This was a big part of a company’s record-keeping process. However, this cumbersome process is now a thing of the past, as businesses move to digitize their receipt disbursal systems.
Benefits of Digital Receipts
Digital Receipts have enabled retailers to store sales data efficiently and helped customers store their proof of payments without collecting mounds of paper bills. Let us look at the various benefits this receipt revolution has triggered:
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No more Lost or Undecipherable Receipts
Paper receipts take up space and are cumbersome to store. This pain is felt by both businesses and their customers. Digital receipts turned the tide. They can be completely stored on the cloud (there are platforms that allow the storing of digital receipt copies) and take up no space, anywhere. This also improves record keeping and accounting and removes all chances of fraud.
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Make Financial Administration Easier
E-receipts are safe, credible, and have less potential for errors as you don’t need to enter the same information in more than one place. This reduces the work of financial administration, which means the employees have more time to produce analyses, forecasts, and other insights.
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Save Money
Paper costs money. Businesses across the world have saved billions of dollars by onboarding digitized receipt solutions. Consider the costs that companies save: buying paper, ink, printer, hiring manpower, and renting space. Digital receipts eliminate this entire cost cycle.
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Go Green
By switching to smarter digital receipts, businesses cut down on paper consumption and reduce their carbon footprints. Statistics show that 10 million trees are cut every year just to make paper rolls for receipts. Also, traditionally receipts are printed on thermal paper which cannot be recycled.
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Create a First-Party Customer Database
Using e-Receipts has emerged as a sure-shot way for businesses to build a first-hand customer database. This is not information that they have sourced from a second or third party. The email IDs and phone numbers are generated first-party and can help a brand build better customer relations and promote its products and offers.
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Quick Sharing
When you have paper receipts, it becomes difficult to share financial information between different departments. The receipts need to be scanned and emailed. Sometimes scanning a hard copy reduces the visibility of the printed data. E-receipts have done away with this roadblock. Now, all information is clearly accessible and can be shared with multiple departments instantly. Also, since the information is available on the cloud, it can also be shared remotely.
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Get Instant Customer Feedback
Keeping an ear out for customer feedback is a proven way of increasing retention. How do brands get instant customer feedback? Brands can send survey forms along with an e-receipt. This feedback helps them gain better insights into their customers and share relevant product information with them.
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Add Power to your Marketing Efforts
Digital Receipt is a great communication platform with high open rates and helps Marketers consolidate multiple triggers in one receipt template
Use Cases: How Digital Receipts Improve Customer Engagement
Now that an increasing number of countries have paved the way for the switch from paper receipts to digital records, businesses are making the transition and moving with the times. Digital Receipts are also evolving into customer engagement tools and are allowing retailers to understand their users better and have quality conversations with them.
Let’s look at the different ways in which e-Receipts can boost interactions with customers:
Add Surveys
Digital Receipts incorporate surveys to enable businesses to get feedback from their users. This information helps them improve their products or services and know customer preferen
Share Personalized Offers & Deals
Enable Retailers to collect multiple messaging in one, share promotions, savings summaries & more
Provide Website Links
Digital Receipts are featuring links to business websites, thus improving engagement, and boosting conversions. There are also features to add personalized product suggestions and the latest offers
Monitor Transactional Data
Digital receipts provide companies with a new avenue to monitor transactional data. They can track customer purchase patterns and use the insights to target them with personalized product offers
Build Targeted Loyalty Programs
Data from Digital Receipts helps retailers track their regular customers and offer loyalty points and rewards. This, in turn, attracts more customer loyalty
Give more power to your business with the right solution – Digital Receipts
Zence Commerce helps businesses stand out with personalized digital receipts. They enable retailers to include one-on-one communication like savings summaries and customer preference-driven promotions.
What are the features that Zence Digital Receipts offer to companies?
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Customized Receipts
The receipts can be customized as per a brand’s requirements as well as for customers
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Personalized Offers and Recommendations
Businesses can use Zence digital receipts to include offers that are personalized as per customer preferences. Product recommendations and incentive programs can also be offered to customers using the platform
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Send through SMS/WhatsApp/ Email
Besides e-mail, the solution empowers brands to use the most popularly used communication channels like SMS and WhatsApp to send receipts to their customers
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Track Payment
Brands can track their payments with the click of a button and get instant access to sales records and revenue generated
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Easy Integration
There is no need to reinvent the wheel. This plug-and-play toolkit integrates with your existing POS system
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Embeds Marketing Communication
Zence e-Receipts help brands boost engagement by embedding marketing communication like personalized messages, product promotions, and feedback links on receipts.
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Captures Contact Information of Customers at POS
Get first-party data on your customers. This data is a great way to get insights into customer purchase patterns, preferences, and loyalty toward a brand.
Sum Up: Time to start the journey of Digitizing Receipts
Digital receipts have proven to be beneficial to both customers and retailers. Customers can keep online records of their spending. Businesses can reduce their paper costs, track finances easily and build customer engagement. What’s more, the latest Digital Receipt solutions, like Zence Receipts, don’t require a big integration process. No wonder more and more businesses are agreeing that it’s time to start the journey of digitizing their receipts and upgrading their systems.
