5 Ways To Improve Your Customer Payment Experience…

The Essential Guide

Make payments quick and secure, meeting the expectations of the most demanding customer.

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Why is Customer Experience Important?

Offering the best customer shopping experience is crucial when it comes to increasing sales, growing a loyal customer base and staying competitive in the market. Whether it’s over-the-phone, online or over web-chat, the last thing you need is a frustrating payment process for your staff and customers. It could result in a lost sale or a customer looking elsewhere for future purchases.

The modern consumer is demanding. They expect convenience and security when shopping with your organisation, especially when it comes to their personal information. With major brands impacted by huge data breaches, they need to trust you with their cardholder data (CHD).

The process also has to be simple and straightforward, with no unnecessary obstacles, dropped calls, long call queues or complex systems to tackle.

Here are the most important considerations when you want to improve your customer payment journey:

Stay in Full Conversation at All Times

If you accept, process, store or transmit card data then PCI DSS affects your organisation. Cardholder data is continuously at risk of theft from hackers that are on the lookout for a way to exploit weaknesses in your organisation.

So, no matter the size of your business, PCI DSS is there to protect your customers and their data, assisting in the prevention of a data breach which could have a huge impact.

Easy to Deploy and Simple to Use

Cloud based payment systems (with no cumbersome hardware) and flexible license models allows for quicker deployment within your organisation. The system has to be intuitive and easy to use, which means less training and less time away from customers.

If you employ temporary or working-from-home agents, having a system that’s easy to scale up and down provides you with flexibility during busy or seasonal sales periods.

Over time you can save hours by using a simple and reliable service that doesn’t have your team constantly troubleshooting issues, facing technical glitches and becoming irate when a customer is on the phone. If your team begins to resent the systems they use day-in day-out, that same negativity is going to reflect in their call quality.

Do your customers really want to hear an agent having to apologise and moan about the systems they use?

Accept Payments Over SMS & Web Chat

Your point of sale is no longer just a traditional brick-and-mortar building or an online web store. Customers will be looking to interact with you instantly across multiple channels, such as social media, web chat, mobile apps and SMS.

For eager customers ready to make a sale there and then, you can do better than asking them to call you to pay over the phone or simply sending a generic link to your online store.

If you can advance the customer to the checkout stage quickly and efficiently, using the information they’ve already provided, not only will you improve your sales conversions, but provide a positive brand experience. Your team can send a unique payment link to the customer, with a pre-populated sales order and pre-filled information such as name, delivery address and email address. All they have to do is enter their payment details and the order is complete, without having to call an agent or search through an unfamiliar online store.

Save Card Details to Make Orders Quicker

Regular customers will find it very frustrating having to provide payment details for every order they place with you. By using Tokenisation, you can offer to save their card details securely against their account with zero risk. All your customers need to do is provide reference details and confirm their identity to complete the order. If this saves a minute or two for each payment, it could collectively result in substantial time saving across your organisation over time. You’re also saving valuable time for your customer, a major win.

But what if they’ve only ever placed an order with you online and want to quickly call your team to process another? By using an omni-channel payment platform if doesn’t matter how they pay, tokenised card details are always available. All an agent has to do is verify their identity, confirm they want to use the saved card information against the account and the transaction is completed.

Don't Ask Customers to Read Out Card Details

Customers are becoming more aware what personal information they share, how they share it and with whom. Having to deal with fraudulent activity on their card after shopping with your organisation would be a customer experience nightmare. Did an agent write the card details down, did someone near the customer overhear them read out the details, have your systems been compromised resulting in a data breach?

You may have spent valuable time on the phone with a customer, discussing their order, upselling additional products, talking through terms and conditions. If it then reaches the payment stage and the customer isn’t comfortable giving out sensitive payment details over the phone, you may lose a sale and a valuable customer.

Customers need to trust you to handle their payment information in a secure manner. By asking them to enter their card details into their telephone keypad, nothing sensitive is spoken out loud. The agent never sees compromising data and the payment is processed there and then, never stored on your IT systems.

The entire call can also be recorded from start to finish, without the need to pause and resume the recording.

If you’re looking to achieve PCI-DSS compliance (the highest level of payment security standard) this is a giant leap forward in reducing your scope and accountability. You won’t be a victim of a data breach resulting in card details being leaked, simply because they won’t be there.

The Risks and Penalties for not Complying

Although PCI DSS is not a legal requirement, it is mandatory if your organisation wishes to process transactions with the major card schemes.

Here are some of the potential drawbacks and penalties that could occur if you do not maintain PCI compliance:

Legal costs, settlements and judgments
Termination of ability to accept payment cards
Lost jobs (CISO, CIO, CEO and dependent professional positions)
Going out of business
Higher subsequent costs of compliance

The bottom line is, if you’re not compliant and you experience a data breach, your bank provider could choose to impose fines onto you or restrict your ability to take card payments. This can have a huge impact on how you do business.