3 common agreement traps that can kill your conversion rates

Nobody wants a sale to fall over at the last minute. But, inevitably, some do. And when they fail because of an easily avoidable flaw in the customer experience, it can come as a big blow to your sales and marketing teams, who have worked so tirelessly to get the customer over the line. What can cause poor customer experiences? And, more importantly, what can you do to fix them? 

Eliminate friction when it counts

Friction in the final stages of a customer journey—like signing, submitting, or authorising an agreement—is one of the biggest causes of last-minute sale failures. This friction can kill conversion rates, often unnecessarily. Mentally, the customer may have already said, “Yes”. But how quickly that can change to, “Sorry, not this time” if there are glitches in the final steps of signing the contract.

Fortunately, there are simple ways to remove this friction. For example, you could pre-populate final contracts and forms with known customer information to save the customer time in filling it out. Or, you could make it easy for them to open and sign your forms anywhere, on any device.

Simple fixes like these can help reduce abandonment and bolster conversion. And the organisations that have already done so are reaping the benefits. Recent research by Deloitte and Docusign found that CX leaders who use more advanced agreement management solutions report up to 31% lower deal abandonment compared to those with lower maturity. What’s more, 83% believe it helps them achieve their customer support and digital self-service goals. 

Keen to start reaping results like these yourself? Let’s take a look at how CX leaders can identify and eliminate three key “agreement traps”—and keep customers moving forward—by using tools like Docusign eSignature, Web Forms, and Maestro, which are all part of Docusign IAM for CX.

Trap 1. Where do I sign? 

If it’s hard for a customer to work out where they need to sign a contract, or how they should get the signed contract back to you, then you’re not doing your job properly. Today, customers across the globe expect the easy ability to digitally sign documents from any device—and, by “easy”, we’re not talking about saving a PDF to a local folder before signing, and then reattaching to an email. Those days are long gone. 

Now, it’s all about one-click signing. And, as the world’s leading platform to send and sign documents, Docusign eSignature delivers. It is a familiar, trusted, and reliable way to get your contracts and agreements signed by customers; and, with features like custom branding and responsive signing, it is intuitively designed to make the process stress-free and simple. At no moment do your customers think, “This is a hassle.” 

Behind the scenes, Docusign IAM for CX helps you create, manage, and act on all these agreements, right across the customer lifecycle. Features like ID verification, dynamic forms and workflows, agreement generation and personalisation, real-time tracking and notification, and data integration and insights make it easy for your teams to generate trusted, accurate contracts on time, every time.

Trap 2. Haven’t I filled this info in before? 

There’s nothing more frustrating than having to re-enter your personal details on a new form (OK, maybe waiting two hours on hold beats this CX fail). Just because you’re dealing with a different department or point of contact in a business, it doesn’t mean you have to start from scratch on a new form, right? Too often, though, companies fail at the simple task of pre-populating new forms with the information they’ve already got. Perhaps the data was stuck in a silo. Or perhaps the CRM didn’t “talk” to the agreement system, and the sales consultant didn’t have time to manually move the info over. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. Building on the intuitive experience of Docusign eSignature, Web Forms enables you to dynamically pre-populate form fields. The platform pulls data from other forms the customer might have already filled in, or from your external customer systems, to complete as much of the agreement as possible from the get-go. It all helps to accelerate the completion process, and eliminate those feelings of frustration that arise when a customer thinks, “I’ve already given you these details.”

Trap 3. What’s taking so long? 

Waiting is not a good customer experience. Any delays in the process of getting a contract ready for a customer to sign can thwart the sale. So, it goes without saying that anything you can do to accelerate the process will help move things in the right direction.  

Behind the scenes, Docusign Maestro helps your sales and marketing teams streamline and automate key steps in the process of creating, negotiating, and signing a contract. By minimising delays and mitigating the risk of errors along the way, you bolster customer trust and reduce the likelihood of them abandoning a deal.

Eliminate agreement traps from your customer experience

As the examples above show, a customer’s experience at the pointy end of a sale can really count towards your conversion rates. If you’re keen to learn more about how Docusign IAM for CX can help you deliver a great experience—not just when closing a deal, but at all stages of the customer journey—then get in touch.