Relentlessly reliable payments

Communicate Telecoms’ mission is to make customers “unstoppable” with its dedicated business connectivity and telephony solutions, and “relentless” support services. In seven years, it has grown steadily and consistently from zero to nearly 400 customers.

“We often know customers’ phones or broadband have gone down before they do,” said John Cooper, Managing Director, Communicate Telecoms. “By the time they notice we’ll already be working on a fix — and in the meantime I’ll even drive a 5G router over to them myself if I have to!”

Communicate can offer this exceptional customer experience in part because its ultra-lean team can stay focused on customers, instead of getting tangled up in financial admin. “There’s just three of us serving hundreds of customers, so we’re an efficient, customer-focussed operation,” said John. “And that’s where GoCardless comes in.”

Tens of thousands saved in FTE costs each month

Every single one of Communicate’s customers pays their monthly fixed line bill by Direct Debit via GoCardess, integrated with Xero.

“Monthly billing only takes an hour or two, tops, thanks to the integration with Xero,” said John. “Once I create the monthly recurring invoices in Xero, it schedules all future payments in GoCardless and I never have to touch it again. And it’s so reliable that we never get calls from customers about payment issues.”

As a result, Communicate doesn’t need a dedicated accounts receivables team to manage billing or chase late payers.

“I can do it myself, which saves two or three FTEs at a cost of around £35k each,” said John. “Instead of investing in administrators we can invest in the sales team to help keep the business growing.”

More cash on hand thanks to Same Day Settlement+

Cashflow fuels growth for every small business, and with Same Day Settlement+ from GoCardless, payments land in Communicate’s bank account on the same day customers are charged. That’s two days sooner than standard Direct Debit. Sky-high success rates also mean nearly every payment rolls in as expected.

Same Day Settlement+ gets us from invoice to cash as quickly as possible, and our payment success rate is 99.71%. When I do the billing on Friday the cash hits the bank on Monday, so we can move a lot faster as a business, by paying suppliers sooner and bringing forward strategic investments.

The use of intelligent machine learning in Same Day Settlement+ ensures that only payments with a high-probability of success are paid out early. This protects Communicate from any extra admin should an early payout have to be reversed.

Simple to use and jargon free — what’s not to love?

Communicate has been collecting customers’ Direct Debits with GoCardless since day one, and it was a case of love at first sight.

“I saw straight away that GoCardess was exactly the kind of simple but powerful payment solution we needed,” said John.

I’m not the biggest tech-head but the dashboard is super intuitive, and you don’t need any technical know-how to get up and running. I’ve never really needed much help from the support team, but whenever I have needed them, they’ve set me straight in seconds.

More of the same please

Faster cashflow, reliable payments, automated admin — John says this is the perfect recipe for faster and cheaper growth.

Without GoCardless, I don’t think we’d have been able to manage as many customers as we do with such a small team. Our plan is to keep bringing on between five and ten customers a month over the next five years, and GoCardless will be with us all the way. That’s a no brainer for me, because the solution and the service are that good.