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Many aspects of modern business are challenging, but document signing should not be one of them. We’ve all received an email where we are directed to a needlessly complex or poorly-signposted signature process that has – at best – caused us an hour of frustration and – at worst – made us give up on the company altogether.
As one of the crucial points of contact your customer has with you, it is vital that the experience is seamless, secure, and swift. They have chosen your brand, and now it’s time to start building that all-important loyalty. The problem of signing the document should never be placed on your signer. It should never inconvenience, annoy, frustrate, or delay them.
This blog will reveal why substandard digital signing is failing your business, and what you can do to turn it around. Read on to discover how to get it right.
Why Substandard Digital Signing Is Failing Your Business
Below, we have detailed some of the most common problems with traditional signing processes – and explained why digital signing processes are the best choice for ambitious, customer-centric businesses.
Wave Goodbye to a Poor Signing Experience
Negotiating and signing a contract is one of the first important interactions a customer has with your brand. You want to make it slick, professional, seamless, secure, compliant, and convenient.
A protracted, confusing signing process is likely to elicit a highly negative reaction and may leave your signatories with the impression that your company doesn’t care about providing a great customer experience.
Too often, businesses fail to explain the options or processes to their signatories for digital signing. If, and when, the signatories do figure it out, they must regularly install or purchase software, print the documents, sign them, scan them in, and then send them back.
This approach presumes a lot from the signatories; namely that they have a printer, ink, paper, and scanner. It also assumes that they are happy to incur postage or courier costs and/or take time out to head down to the post office.
Furthermore, if you don’t make the process convenient for them or offer them a choice, such as signing through a variety of channels, they will believe you don’t value them or care about their time.
The result? You have created several unnecessary, frustrating, and time-consuming hurdles that are likely to result in unhappy, confused signatories who may be put off from signing at all. And that’s when your competitors step in…
Sign Provides a Great Customer Experience
Brands need their customer experience to be as positive as possible, across every possible touchpoint. Digitising the document signing process speeds up processes and reduces the margin for error – all within a secure portal that protects their important data.
An integral part of delivering a great customer experience is offering choice. Sign, CM.com's digital signing technology, enables customers to receive and sign documents on any device, from anywhere in the world, and through a variety of different channels such as WhatsApp Business Solution, email, and SMS. Not only does this offer greater convenience to your customer, but it also increases turnaround time and shows you are a digitally-savvy brand that prioritises convenience and accessibility.
Digital signing has a positive impact on signatories. It makes life easier. It gives people more time to spend on more important and meaningful tasks. Furthermore, it feels, and is, more efficient and secure. In a world that doesn’t always offer these experiences, why not provide this to your signatories, if you can?
The Environmental Impact of Hand-Signing Documents
With global consumption of pulp and paper expected to double between 2010 and 2060, the same can be expected for paper waste. Asking your customers to hand-sign agreements makes them question your environmental credentials, and worry that you aren’t an innovative, forward-thinking company.
So why not make the days of physically printing, and sending reams of paper documents a thing of the past?
Alongside honouring your environmental responsibilities, this careless approach can lead to print shame among your signatories, and peers. You don’t want to be known as the brand that doesn’t give two hoots about sustainability, after all!
Moreover, you cannot assume that customers have a printer at home. According to printer industry analyst Quocirca, global printer sales have been declining for some time now. Furthermore, the impact of the pandemic has meant that many of us are now more accustomed to using digital tools, which could lead to older generations getting rid of their home printer too.
Sign Helps You Reduce Your Impact on the Environment
When it comes to the crunch, showing your customers that you have strong social and environmental ethics shows that you care about the world you live in, and the people around you. It shows you understand the importance of economic resilience while minimising the negative impact your business and its people have on the planet. These are important values that are well worth sharing, and they’ll help you build trust and rapport with your customers.
The aforementioned industry analysts, Quocirca found that one of the top reasons that printing volumes had declined was the move towards adopting secure e-signature technologies. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an integral part of the way customers experience a brand, and this should extend to every touchpoint in your customer experience – including the tools you use.
If your customers have confidence in the digital signing process, then why not choose to boost your environmental credentials, and do your bit towards preserving our precious natural environment?
Sign Helps Ensure Security and Compliance
When using Sign, customers simply do not need to worry about honouring their legal responsibilities. Sign is compliant with eIDAS (EU) and ESIGN Act (US), which means it provides a safe way for customers to conduct business online. All Sign's processes are 100% secure, and legally binding – and, as we have mentioned earlier, the customer experience is second to none.
Furthermore, couriers and postal services lose mountains of packages daily. In fact, the UK Citizens Advice Bureau reports that more than 5 million people experienced having a parcel lost or stolen in 2020 alone. Picture that embarrassing phone call to a customer, apologising that the courier misplaced their important document, and you’ll quickly see the benefits of minimising courier or postal usage. When you send files through a secure digital server, you simply don’t need to worry about documents going missing.
Take Advantage of Sign's Benefits Today!
Now that we have reached the end of this blog, we hope the information provided has been compelling and has convinced you of the many benefits and advantages of choosing Sign for your business. If you need a further nudge, perhaps try thinking of the advantages and benefits of manual signing processes for you and your customers – and let us know if you think of any!
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