The Problem
Trail’s workflow was heavily dependent on an outbound sales-driven model, requiring the customer success team to handle onboarding of customers and collections. The CS team was spending close to 20 hours/month on just billing operations - primarily on manually chasing customers to collect payment details after onboarding and still losing out on potential revenue.
Managing ongoing subscriptions and setting up billing was a completely manual and error-prone process. This led to a confusing experience for customers, leading to a poor introduction to an otherwise fantastic product.
The Solution
After evaluating other players in the space, Trail chose Chargebee as their preferred partner for subscription management and automated billing for:
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the ability to automate subscription workflows and recover lost revenue,
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an optimized billing experience, so more time could be spent on onboarding,
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its support for payment gateways and methods such as GoCardless for direct debit,
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it’s reputation in the market
The Pay-off
While most of Trail’s issues tied back to potentially losing out on a lot of revenue, Trail’s usage of Chargebee resulted in more than simply recovering lost revenue. They were able to:
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Close a sale much faster. The checkout flow integrated the signup process and payment collection to reduce drop-offs
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Get a complete view into different subscription states, with the ability to configure special deals or rates for different customers
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Achieve visibility into accurate real-time business metrics that they care about. Before Chargebee, Trail had to work out the MRR details from their accounting system, which often wasn’t up-to-date. There was a significant difference in the expected revenue and actual revenue.