Relationships Count – The Importance of AP Customer Service
Introduction
Because accounts payable touches such a wide range of stakeholders, from all the vendors, to employees, to senior management, to various governmental agencies, its operations have a tremendous, though often under-recognized, impact on the organization. Although not “customer facing” in the traditional sense, these stakeholders, nevertheless, are AP’s “customers” and AP’s customer service to them, and how they perceive it, is important to the organization. This paper posits that good customer service by accounts payable is important in three ways that have a direct bearing on profitability and operations:
#1. Process Improvement. AP customer service provides a window into opportunities for process improvement. Want to know where gaps are in the procure-to-pay process? Customer service calls and complaints indicate the scope of problems and point to specific process breakdowns.
#2. Strong Supplier Relations. Secondly, it impacts supplier relations, either positively or negatively. Empirical studies have quantified benefits of good AP customer service versus the cost of poor relationships.
#3. Company Reputation. Thirdly, in today’s social media environment, missteps can spin out of control very quickly, where seemingly minor anecdotal incidents become defining truths with real consequences for a company.
Read this information-packed report to:
- Learn about AP customer service and who delivers it
- Understand the underlying drivers of questions to deliver efficient and satisfactory customer service
- Discover how AP customer service can fix the processes and reduce the questions
- Free up your most experienced people by reducing questions
- Articulate why strong supplier relations are important
- Find out why having a great reputation prevents problems before they start
In its interactions with suppliers, AP carries a lot of responsibility. AP is a front-line representative of the company to the supplier. In some cases, given electronic catalogs and online sales systems, AP’s interaction could even be the first person-to-person contact the supplier has with the company. Read this report to learn why AP relationships are so important and why they count!
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Financial Operations Networks (FON) is a financial operations company whose products help accounts payable teams prevent payment fraud: VendorInfo, a vendor portal; InvoiceInfo, a supplier portal; DisbursementControls.com, a membership resource for disbursement controls; and VIMCOE, which provides accounts payable certification. FON is a Nacha Preferred Partner.
FON strengthens front-line control points across vendor onboarding, supplier maintenance, and payments — verifying vendor information, validating bank account ownership, running compliance checks, and reducing exposure to business email compromise (BEC) before payments are made.
VendorInfo is a vendor portal for onboarding: it verifies tax IDs, screens OFAC and validates bank account ownership before a vendor is paid. InvoiceInfo is a supplier portal for after the invoice: suppliers look up invoice status, payment dates and remittance advice themselves instead of emailing AP. Both sit on top of the same ERP and are often used together.
Yes. FON offers specialized programs including the AP Payment Fraud Prevention Certification and the Accredited Vendor Information Professional (AVIP) Certification to help finance professionals strengthen expertise and advance their careers.
Request a demo and our team will walk you through how FON can strengthen your controls, reduce fraud exposure, and improve AP efficiency based on your organization’s goals.
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