Learn How Receipt Scanning Can Help You Build Stronger Connection With Customers

Managing payments from customers and clients have never been easier. With increasing sales and customers, digital payment gateways are evolving with developing technology. And, it doesn’t just stop there.

With collecting payments, businesses put a lot of effort into processing those payments – banking connectivity, transaction verification, managing physical receipts, etc. But, managing physical receipts is still a big challenge as it reduces the productivity of businesses in the long run. Also, its one-time use adds to the environmental pollution as a resource which becomes a waste.

To tackle the challenges, a sustainable and effective solution – a receipt scanning app, has been developed. The app allows you to scan the electronic receipts and store them in your system without any physical printing of the receipts. It has the following capabilities, beneficial for both parties in the transaction process –

• Easy scanning through any mobile device, or a scanner.
• OCR technology allows for easy and accurate verification of receipts.
• Integrations to platforms like accounting software, provide expense reporting features.
• Storing electronic receipts gets handy.

But, technology evolves with the intelligence and creativity of developers which takes the receipt scanning process further to achieve parallel business goals. With this article, we shall learn the latest ways how receipt scanning can help you build stronger connections with your customers.

1. Customer Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are an effective way to create a loyal customer base for your business. This nurturing can happen in many ways –

• Reward points on loyalty account
• Cashback promotions
• Buy-one-get-two deals

This is very common with E-commerce websites, FMCG and electronic products brands. Mostly, the cashback is between 5% to 10% of the purchase value. Once the customers collect a certain amount of reward points they can spend those on the purchase of products further.

The process is simple – the customer purchases and keeps the digital receipt secure, then those receipts are verified, and the reward is given for the same. Digital receipt scanning makes this process faster and more accurate with its OCR technology, which scans and extracts the required information from the receipts within seconds – date of purchase, merchant name, items, amount of purchase, etc.

But, the most exciting part is that it automatically checks if the promotional product is on the receipt and within the prescribed date of purchase for the reward. Also, it detects invalid and fake receipts quickly, which helps reduce the inevitable human error.

Figure 1: Receipt Scanning for promotion product

This way the receipt scanning helps you create a strong customer relationship, and improves your business revenue easily.

2. Offering Discounts And Sales Through QR Codes

Who doesn’t love discounts and offers on their favourite products? And, by putting coupon QR codes on the receipts, you have the opportunity to engage with your customers through repeat purchases for discounts and offers on the same.

This practice is trending amongst big businesses, and they are gaining a lot of customer retention through this. For example, a customer purchased from a beauty brand – Soulflower, and to increase their goodwill the business contacted their customer on WhatsApp with the code for a buy-one-get-one-free deal. This is possible through the digital receipt scanning done by the businesses, which gives them details – contact number, purchase history, etc. for making the offer.

You can achieve this in different ways –

• Include the code in the dynamic QR code on receipts.
• Include a URL link which takes customers to your store directly with a discount code applied at the checkout.
• Send a QR code on WhatsApp with various discount offers.

3. Retargeting Customers Through Dynamic QR Codes

Another important benefit receipt scanning brings to your business is re-targeting your customers through Google and Facebook. This is possible through dynamic QR codes than static ones. The dynamic QR code gives you access to various types of QR code campaigns, which include landing pages, app downloads, coupon codes, social media, PDFs, and much more.

So, it works in this way. Your customers scan the QR code, a cookie gets stored on their smartphones which is used to retarget them online through relevant advertisements. This is an easy way to nudge potential customers who haven’t converted yet but scanned your QR code through receipt scanning platforms.

Also, you can attract your customer base through social media QR code, which provides the customers easy access to leave reviews on your products, engage with your new posts, and maybe vouch for your brand on different posts.

For example, you can put your Instagram QR code on the receipt to let customers scan and engage with your posts to boost brand awareness with a stronger customer connection.

4. Customer Retention With Smart Receipts Features

Which scenario is the best – a receipt scanning app which only scans receipts, or a smart receipt scanning app which is interactive enough to provide post-purchase experiences?

We all will prefer the latter one. So, the goal here is to increase sales by offering smart digital receipts to your customers for smooth post-purchase engagements through the following ways –

• One-click reorders, sharing with friends and family.
• Customers can save receipts to digital wallets.
• Receive order updates and notifications.
• View merchant offers or sales on products.
• Option of feedback and easy returns.

This feature allows businesses with better connectivity with customers and eventually increases their customer base.

Finally, you know how to tweak receipt scanning practices towards building stronger customer connectivity, along with managing payment operations sustainably.

Final Thoughts

Receipt scanning has evolved businesses into a customer-centric business model. The one-time use of receipts has been extended for multi-purpose usages like creating discounts, coupon codes, etc. This attracts customers back to their purchased brand through many different ways like customer loyalty programs, discounts and offers through dynamic QR codes, retargeting customers, and accessing other smart digital receipts features. This way a vibrant customer connection develops between both the parties to the receipt scanning process.