Customer service is no longer limited to customer-seller interactions and product information. With the range of payment methods available today, giving your customers a safe and convenient payment process is also important.
If you feel like you’ve been left out of the loop with payment processing systems, don’t worry. We’ve done the research for you. In this article, we bring you a list of tips that’ll help you get your business back on track.
Let’s look at ways to upgrade your credit card processing methods to engage your customers better.
Partner With the Right Payment Processor
A payment processor works as an intermediary between your bank and your customers’ bank. It relates transaction-related information from your customers’ credit and debit cards to your bank and their bank.
Payment processing also involves checks on transactions and other security measures to avoid card-related fraudulent transactions. As complex as it sounds, payment processing happens in a matter of seconds.
Your payment processor’s duties don’t stop there. Post-transaction, should there be a customer complaint, it falls on your payment processing partner to handle the issue.
You can see why it is imperative to pick the right payment processor. Not only will it keep you and your customers safe, but ensuring speed, reliability, and security means you’ll prevent customer frustration, returns, and cancelation charges.
Choosing the right payment processing partner involves looking at the setup time, ease of operations, flexible upgrades, customer support, and more. In addition, ensuring that the payment processor is PCI compliant and offers fraud management tools, data security, multiple payment options is also imperative.
Find a payment processor that will support upgrades and also provide a simple contract. You shouldn't be required to cancel the contract. However, if you must, cancellation terms should be easy and without a hefty sum.
Integration is another useful feature you must look into. It allows you to integrate your payment, bookkeeping, and accounting tools. This reduces the task of manually recording your transactions. Having records of transactions can also help mitigate fraudulent chargeback disputes.
Instead of looking into multiple payment processors, find one who can do it all. This’ll reduce your downtime as well as your cost of setting up.
Payment processor providers, like Loyent, offer customizable tools and services for different business types. So whether you’re running a retail, counter, or table service shop, there’s a solution tailored to your unique needs.
Follow the Payment Processor’s Rules
Payment processors have specific rules about merchants accepting cardless transactions. This might include obtaining additional information from the customer to authenticate the purchase—for example, IP addresses, digital signatures, etc. To avoid transaction-related issues, fees and chargebacks, always familiarize yourself with your payment processor’s rules and ensure your employees know them as well.
Double Down On Security
Two-factor authentication, card or address verification are a few methods that will allow your customers to access your shop online safely. This will not only deter fraud practices but also safeguard your customers’ data.
Provide Payment Descriptor Information
Don’t let your business suffer because of incorrect descriptor information. Accurate merchant names on transactions can reduce misunderstandings. An example of this is chargebacks because the customer forgot or couldn’t identify a transaction to your store.
Avoid issues such as these by providing accurate payment descriptor information when signing up for a merchant account.
Determine Your Refund Policy and Make It Accessible
Refunds and chargebacks happen all the time and for several different reasons. While you cannot eliminate them altogether, you can minimize occurrences. The first logical option would be to avoid closing transactions without valid authorization from the customer. Another crucial aspect to remember is to make your refund policy easily accessible to the customers. The biggest benefit of this is it helps you avoid chargebacks.
Chargebacks are time-consuming and can be avoided easily if you state your refund policy where the customer can see it—at every point of sale and on the receipts as well.
Resolve Customer Complaints Immediately
Often customers will push a chargeback only if the merchant was unable to resolve issues on their level. This is because your payment processor first handles most disputes, and your customer is already frustrated by the time complaints reach you. This is why it’s crucial to stay on top of complaints—make it a priority to resolve complaints as early as possible.
Upgrade Your Payment Processing Capabilities
There are multiple payment systems (traditional, digital, etc.) and just as many merchants across credit and debit card issuers and networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.). Opting not to include any of these means you’ve lost clients with that specific payment preference. The better way is to have a payment processor with omnichannel acceptance.
Final Thoughts
Business operations and transactions post-COVID-19 have changed drastically. Of course, online payments existed before, but the need for accountability from business owners was never this strong. That’s why upgrading your business's payment processing service has become crucial today.
Loyent can help you set up your payments no matter the size of your business. Our all-in-one system helps you take payments, track sales, and tailor services to match the sector you operate in. Accept payments, prevent fraud, and do everything faster with us.