Tips For Payment Processors Looking to Build Strong Customer Relationships
Competition in ecommerce is fierce. This applies not just in the merchant sector, but also among payment processors. This sector has become crowded with many new entrants taking advantage of digital payment technology to enter the field. As a result, profit margins in the industry can be extremely narrow, with competition for customers driving price points down to the bare minimum.
Besides using technology to offer the most efficient processing possible, building customer relationships with the merchants you do business with is an important tool for building a payment processing business. To accomplish this as a payment processor, there are a number of steps you can take to bolster your customer relationships.
These include the following:
Tip #1: Nurture Client Relationships
Given the competitive nature of the field, payment processors can’t afford to take their customers for granted. Instead of enrolling new customers and then focusing exclusively on landing additional customers, it can be more productive to also cultivate your new customers into loyal, long-term clients. Keeping existing customers is generally more cost-effective than finding new ones, so customer nurturing is definitely worth pursuing.
How can this be done?
A prime way to nurture client relationships and build customer loyalty is to reach out to them on a regular basis to offer assistance, whether by providing business tips or simply soliciting their input on aspects of the business. This type of approach enables you to determine if they are encountering issues with any of the services you provide, or if they have plans to grow their business – areas where you are well-positioned to offer assistance.
Tip #2: Offer Business Improvement Tips
As a payment processor, you have access to an audience of ecommerce merchants who are typically overworked and distracted. Their businesses often operate on very thin margins, making them prime targets for tips that can help them improve their productivity and boost their top and bottom lines.
In addition to being well-placed to offer general business improvement tips, payment processors can also use their access to customer account statements to provide specialized advice. For instance, a customer experiencing high chargebacks might be receptive to tips on reducing them. Similarly, customers issuing a high amount of refunds could be open to tips on designing a return policy to cut down on disputes.
Monitoring customer statements can also allow you to provide early warnings about potentially negative trends in a customer’s business, such as rising refund or chargeback rates. By providing them with steps they can take to handle such issues, you can help them control costs before they seriously impact the bottom line.
Tip #3: Select Synergistic Partners
Payment processors can view client problems with chargebacks and other dispute-related issues in real-time, but dealing with these problems may be out of their area of expertise. Often, merchants lack the resources required to effectively handle chargebacks. Most are unfamiliar with the processes to resolve disputes before they become chargebacks or how to reverse unwarranted chargebacks.
In such cases, payment processors can partner with third-party dispute management firms that specialize in helping merchants bring down their chargeback percentages. These firms can help them navigate the chargeback representment process to attempt to reverse chargebacks that the merchant believes are invalid.
When your merchants use a dispute management service, it can boost their ROI, enhancing their loyalty to your company for making the connection. In selecting a firm to partner with, be sure to research their past performance and reliability to ensure that your merchants are likely to be happy with their services.
Tip #4: Integrate Service Offerings
Payment processors offering finance software that enables payments can benefit from using an integrated payment solution. This type of solution allows you to process payments within the merchant’s transaction stream, rather than needing to use an outside processor to manage the data. For instance, by enabling shopping cart functionality payments for merchants, you cut out the middleman and boost efficiency. As a result, it becomes significantly easier to maintain a high level of security and compliance.
Such an approach, due to the control it gives you of the complete payment process, also enables you to offer a more tailored purchasing journey on your site for customers. Additionally, this type of system can help save money and reduce the amount of time it takes to process transactions. Integrated payments also reduce the potential for errors and security breaches, with fewer external points of contact in the cash flow.
Whatever system you use, make sure that you are accepting mobile transactions. With consumers increasingly using mobile payment methods to make purchases, accommodating this payment type is a must.
Combining technology and customer service
For payment processors, technology has leveled the playing field and enabled both large and small players to offer rapid transaction speeds, dispute fraudulent chargebacks, and take advantage of a number of high-tech features. As a result, offering superior customer service in addition to the latest advanced tech features is one way to separate your company from the crowd of competitors.
Using any or all of the four tips listed above can help step up your customer service game, boost customer loyalty and improve your customer retention efforts, keeping you a step ahead of your less service-oriented peers.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
