Four Questions to Ask About Your Payer Experience

Payers are more likely to keep moving when nothing is left to guess. When something is unclear, they may stop, call, abandon the payment or enter the wrong information and create a correction for someone on your staff.

Whoever handles your government payment processing today, these four questions will tell you how clear it is for the payer. The best way to answer them is to make a payment yourself, start to finish, on your phone.

1. Can payers tell exactly what they owe?

If payers have to type an account or case number from a paper notice with nothing confirming the match, some of those payments will land on the wrong record or for the wrong amount. Look at how the balance is determined. Is it pulled from your records, or entered by the payer? The closer the amount comes from your own system of record, the fewer corrections and reconciliation headaches your staff has later.

2. Is every fee visible before they commit?

Convenience fee transparency matters. A surprise fee at the last step can create hesitation, abandonment or a later dispute. Check whether each fee is itemized before the payer confirms, and whether the total is easy to spot. If you have to hunt for it, so do they.

3. Is the way to pay obvious?

Count the steps. Check whether payers can see where they are in the process, whether card and bank payment options sit side by side, and whether they get a receipt they can find later. Every unclear step is a chance to give up.

4. Can payers get an answer when your office is closed?

Questions don't wait for business hours. Find out what happens when a payer needs help at 9 p.m. Is there a way to get a quick answer on their own? Is a live person available? Or does the question wait in your voicemail until morning?

What to do with the answers

If any of these questions made you pause, that's where your payers are pausing too, and where your staff is picking up the calls. Start with the one that generates the most calls today.

How AllPaid approaches it

After nearly 30 years in government payments, these are the questions we design around. On AllPaid, every fee is itemized before the payer commits, the total is the biggest number on the screen, and every payment ends with a receipt. When AllPaid connects to an agency's system of record, payers look up their own account and see their real balance. And answers are always available, from AllPaid Assistant or a live person 24/7/365.

See it in the self-guided tour.

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