As the saying goes, “the customer is always right” — and in both B2C and B2C spaces, customer centricity is now table stakes. But when it comes to meeting customer preferences for product payment, many companies come up short.

Namely, B2B customers might think it’s simple to request a discount as a bonus for referring new clients, or to be able to purchase credits for product usage in advance, and they likely expect a quick answer. But making these things actually happen behind-the-scenes can demand intensive manual work — and if you cannot meet customer expectations for a fast resolution, your relationship with the customer may be damaged.

“Custom payment requests often require manual intervention to fulfill, at odds with customers expecting a quick resolution.”

This is why you need to knock it out of the park with your credit system — especially the one-time credits you award on an as-needed basis. If handled well, these credits can enable customer centricity in a traditionally unaccommodating context. But hitting that home run requires coordination across the entire go-to-market motion, which is often missing. So it’s important to understand why credits are so important, why they can be hard to implement effectively, and what Nue does to draw out their full potential. 

In B2B systems, credits are prepaid deposits that can be used to subsidize future product use. Customers can apply credits from their credit pool directly to usage-based pricing, or lower the cost of future invoices by converting credits into credit memos (which are essentially transaction records for a refund).

There are two credit models that serve different purposes: 

• Credit burndown, where users purchase credits on a recurring basis, and then apply those credits to ongoing product usage. While this model offers the flexibility of usage-based pricing, it still allows for a predictable revenue stream, and a reliable sense of what resources the customer will consume. This model typically works best in conjunction with a usage overage model (where usage beyond specific limits will result in an increased charge).
• And one-time credits, where users receive credits on-the-fly. These are a good fit for times when something needs to be paid far in advance of being applied to an invoice. For example, say you want to charge a deposit up-front, and then you eventually apply it to the invoice for the customer’s final month. You can make that deposit a credit, and convert it into a credit memo when needed. One-time credits also work well as discounts for special programs like referral incentives.

It’s no secret that many companies struggle with the rift between CPQ and billing tools, leading to miscommunications and inefficiencies that frustrate customers. And unfortunately, this rift also harms credit systems. If credit systems aren’t closely linked to CPQ and billing systems, it’s tough to be consistent and accurate when agreeing to credit terms, generating credits, and tracking credit usage. As a result, for these companies it takes extensive manual effort (and a lot of time) to orchestrate the use of credits. 

“The rift between CPQ and billing tools has a negative impact on credit systems.”

Of course, if the problem holding back credit systems is a fragmented stack, then the solution requires unifying the stack process. Nue brings together CPQ, billing, and robust credit capabilities in a single tool, eliminating the chance for critical credit information to get lost in the shuffle. You can provide customers with rapid answers to questions about flexible payment options, and prove that your company is committed to a customer-centric approach.

Nue’s most recent updates have streamlined and enhanced what you can do with credits, including both one-time credits and the ones used in credit burndown. It’s easy to convert credits into credit memos, move credit memos back into credits in case there’s been a miscalculation, or generate debit memos (which increase what customers owe).

Perhaps most importantly, Nue now offers a set of APIs to facilitate the invoicing process – which means any payment system you use can now instantly connect to Nue via API to control credit memos and debit memos (a table of which appears below).

Activating the credit system within Nue is as easy as going to the Credits menu in Nue’s Settings. You can enable credit memos by navigating to the Revenue Schedule. Then, you can use the Lifecycle Manager to convert credits into credit memos, or cancel credit memos and turn them back into credits.