Improve Customer Service With Your Credit ... - Business 2 Community

While you may not immediately see the connection here, there is a direct effect between your credit card processing and overall customer satisfaction. Whether in a retail location or online customers want options, and your credit card processing will reflect that. ?There are a number of factors that will affect this, including the third party merchant you choose to work with, the credit vendors you accept and the payment process.

Choosing Your Merchant

The processing company you choose to work with will be a third party merchant who specializes in processing credit payments. Now, with the technical side on the backburner, your merchant will actually play a much larger role in the grand scheme of things. While merchants don?t work directly with the buyers, they still play a large role in your customer happiness. How? Transaction time.

• Be sure that your merchant has a track record for quick transaction processing. If a customer buys something from you and the merchant doesn?t submit the transaction for more than 3-5 business days, your customer is then spending money they don?t have which in turn leads to an unhappy buyer.

Accepting the Right Vendors

While the days of We only accept Visa and MasterCard are basically behind us, customers still want more and more variety. ?NPC.net suggests, ?Your customers want the flexibility and convenience of multiple payment options for purchases.? And, you need to cater to this. Thus, choosing the right vendors will be a critical factor in keeping paying customers happy. If they?re told their card isn?t accepted, their handful of items may be put back.

• The only way to combat this is to accept every method and vendor for payment, or know your customers very well. With 25% or more of them using Discover, for example, you?ll want to be accepting that vendor.

Creating Your Process

The final step in improving customer service through your processing is to successfully develop your overall buying process. Whether purchasing through your ecommerce platform, or with a clerk in your store, customers want the process to be quick and painless ? this means you need to up your convenience factor.

• Online: On your website, be sure that the process of going from cart to payment is simple; confirm the purchases, allow customers to save data, saving time in future purchases, and allow them to get an emailed copy of their receipt. Get them in and out, with as little work as possible.
• In store: Authorization response time is important in an in-store process. While most merchants will marketing a quick response time, 5 seconds or less, you want to be sure to get recommendations on this aspect. Your customer wants to be in and out ? and waiting for a card to be accepted may not only be embarrassing for them but time consuming.

While it doesn?t immediately strike a connection, your credit card processing is a main source of interaction between you and your customer.? Thus, making it fast, convenient and simple will be a significant factor in overall satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Photo credit:?businesscreditcardprocessing.com

Source: http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/improve-customer-service-with-your-credit-card-processing-0241119

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