How To Successfully Manage Customer Payments

Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

You need to provide the finest possible shopping experience for your customers in order to boost sales, build a client base, and maintain your position as a competitive player in the market. You do not want your clients or employees to have a difficult time paying you, whether they do it over the phone, online, or through web chat. This is something that you want to avoid at all costs. It is possible that the consumer will shop elsewhere the next time they need to purchase something, which could result in the loss of a sale.

The procedure needs to be straightforward and free of complications such as dropped calls, lengthy wait periods, and complicated systems that are difficult to comprehend.

Consider the following items if you want to make it less difficult for your consumers to make payments to you.

Avoid Asking For Card Details Over The Phone 

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 a representative 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. Choosing to accept mobile payments could be a great way to ensure this doesn’t happen. 

Talk All Through The Call 

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.

Let People Pay Without Needing An Account

Are we really going to need to remember yet another username and password? I doubt it! Who would want to build a wall like that to stop people from paying?

Forcing people to sign up for an account is too much of an inconvenience for first-time customers, and it’s a big reason why people don’t buy from you.

Smashing Magazine did a study on usability and found that the main reason people don’t like making accounts is that they expect to get a lot of promotional emails.

It also said that many customers don’t understand why they have to sign up to buy something online when they don’t have to do that when they buy something in a store.

It also adds more fields that people have to fill out, which slows down the payment process.

Follow Apple’s example and let people check out as guests to make life easier for potential customers and make sure you get paid.

Offer To Save card Information For The Future 

Each time a customer orders something 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 per payment, it could save your business a lot of money in the long run. You also save the time of the customers, which is a big plus.

As you 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 component of customer service that is often overlooked. Do you have any more advice to give?

 

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