How to Improve Your Payment Experience

Giving your customers a pleasant payment experience is one of the most important things you can do as a business operating in the modern world. With so many options available to consumers, both locally and on the web, it is more important than ever to stand out as a company that is easy to do business with.

Offering a pleasant payment experiences allows you to stand out, in a very good way, from your competitors and can help build crucial brand loyalty in an increasingly fickle world. More importantly, people will remember unpleasant and frustrating purchasing experiences. Some of them may even elect to leave without making the purchase at all. The big question for you to ask, is how you can improve the payment experience for your customers. These tips will help:

Accept the Payments Your Customers Want to Make

With so many shoppers skipping cash completely and carrying around digital wallets and credit cards instead, it’s more important than ever to have your finger on the pulse of the transactions your customers want to make. This includes the following forms of payment:

• Cash

• Checks

• Credit cards

• Debit cards

• Digital payments (PayPal, Apple Pay, Chase Pay, etc)

• Gift cards

You might even offer different payment options for people shopping online versus in stores, though. Offering all payment options in as many places as possible increases the likelihood that you’ll offer the type of payments your customers desire. Make sure you’re offering the appropriate payment types for the customers you serve, at the very least.

Support Multi-Channel Payments

Customers today interact with businesses in numerous ways, including:

• Online

• Via telephone

• In person

• Through social media

They may even change how they want to pay from one month to the next. Allow them the convenience of your flexibility and they will reward you with their loyalty. The bottom line is that businesses need to offer as many avenues for accepting payments and connecting with customer service as possible in order to generate the kind of brand loyalty no amount of money or advertising can buy.

Simplify the Process

This is much bigger than the average business owner realizes. Some people do not actually like to shop. The easier you make it on them to process their transactions, the better they appreciate shopping in your store or on your website. These are a few things you want to keep in mind when choosing checkout processes to help you give your customers what they really want:

• Less is more. The less you ask your customers do, the better they like shopping with you.

• Limit requirements for online purchases. The fewer hoops customers have to go through, the greater the likelihood they’ll complete the purchase online. Don’t force them to log in, complete complex forms, or leave your website if it can be avoided.

• Make all requirements clear. One of the major reasons credit cards are declined online is because information is inaccurate or incomplete. Avoid this with simplified forms your customers can e/asily understand.

Always keep it as simple and clear as possible to instill loyalty among customers.

Prioritize Security

In the day and age of high profile data breaches among heavy hitters in the financial and retail industries, security is not an option. It must be a priority for your organization. Making security a priority helps to reassure customers that it is safe to do business with you, that you’ll make the effort to keep their information safe, and that your business (and your business website) is trustworthy.

One of the best ways to do this is to partner with a credit card payment processor that takes security as seriously as you do. Find out the steps your payment processor takes to keep information secure before you decide to sign up.

Update Your Tech

Technology can make your life infinitely easier. Especially when you take advantage of the latest technology available to secure customer information, streamline the payment process, and improve organizational efficiency. Not only will it resonate well with your customers, but it will also help you increase productivity and profits while making life easier on your dedicated staff. Everybody wins.

Don’t forget to pay particular attention to equipment that allows you to process contactless payments, like digital wallets, and accommodates EMV payments via an approved chip reader.

These steps can go a long way to improving the payment experience for your customers and the way they feel about doing business with you. Contact Zenti Services today to learn more about our payment processing options, plans, free equipment, fees, and more on a month-to-month basis with no long-term contracts. We believe you’re going to love the way we do business.