CANDY WASHINGTON

WRITER | PRODUCER | MANIFESTATION + SELF-LOVE MUSE

Making Payments Easy For Your Customers

Candy WashingtonComment

Hi lovelies,

You need to give your customers the best shopping experience to increase sales, build customer loyalty, and stay competitive in the market. You don't want your customers or employees to have a hard time paying, whether they do it over the phone, online, or through web chat. The customer may go somewhere else the next time they want to buy something, or a sale may be lost.

Consumers have high hopes these days. Customers expect your business to make it easy and safe for them to keep their personal information safe. Cardholder data needs to be trusted with your company because of the recent huge data breaches that hurt major brands.

Also, the process must be easy to follow and free of problems like dropped calls, long wait times, and systems that are hard to understand.

If you want to make it easier for your customers to pay you, think about these things:

Don't Ask People To Read Out The Details Of Their Cards

Consumers are becoming more aware of what information they share, how they share it, and who they share it with. Dealing with fraud after a customer buys something from your company would be a nightmare from the customer's point of view. Do you know if an agent wrote down the card information or if someone overheard them reading it out loud? If so, your systems may have been hacked, which would be a data breach.

You may have spent a lot of time on the phone with a customer talking about their order, trying to sell them more products, and going over the terms and conditions. If the customer doesn't feel comfortable giving sensitive payment information over the phone, you might lose a sale and a good customer.

If you want customers to trust you, you need to keep their payment information safe. When a customer types their card number into their phone keypad, nothing private is said out loud. No sensitive information is seen by the agent or your IT systems, and the payment is processed right away and not saved. You could also ask them to credit card readers for business too. 

Have Constant Communication

Conversations with customers shouldn't end until the order has been placed, with as few breaks as possible. You shouldn't send them to a payment team that has its own calling queue, and you shouldn't ask them to call back on a secure line. During the whole process of making a payment, your agent will build a good relationship with the customer that can be kept going. This will lead to a good experience all around.

When a customer pays by phone, your customer service agent must always be able to talk to the customer. Losing a sale because a customer can't enter their credit card information, won't answer the callback, or can't get in touch with someone from the payments team is the worst thing that can happen.

Easy To Use And Set Up

Using cloud-based payment systems and flexible licensing models makes it possible for an organization to roll out changes more quickly. The system should be simple and easy to understand so that customers don't have to go through a long training process.

If you hire temporary or work-from-home agents, it's helpful to be able to easily change the size of your system.

When you use a simple and reliable provider, you can save a lot of time because you won't have to keep fixing problems, dealing with technical problems, and getting angry when customers call. If your staff starts to dislike the system they use every day, it will show in the way they handle calls.

Do your customers really want your agents to have to apologize and gripe about the system they have to use?

Have The Option To Save Card Information

Every time a customer places an order with you, they will have to give you their payment information. By letting them save their card information, you can make it easier for them to order from you again in the future. Even if it only saves a minute or two per payment, it could save your business a lot of money in the long run. You also save the time of your customers, which is a big plus.

As you'll see, there are many ways you can improve the payment process for your services or products and help your customers. It is a very important part of customer service that is often overlooked. By giving customers the best payment options and ways to pay, you reduce the chance that they will leave during the payment stage. One of the best things you can do is make sure everyone who works in customer service or sales knows how important simple payments are. Do you have any more advice to give?