Is Your Organization Prepared for the Christmas Rush?

The bottom line is, Christmas can be stressful, and your customers expect a quick, simple and convenient shopping experience – whether it’s online, in-store or over the phone.

As a retail merchant, you can spend a lot of time planning for the Christmas rush of November and December, especially after seeing a huge rise in online or CNP (Card not Present) transactions. Company targets expect a better performance than the year before, with an increase in sales and more customers.

But are your teams, payment services and systems up to the challenge? Santa’s workshop is nothing compared to a busy contact centre at Christmas!

By assessing the user journey and your teams’ tools, you can identify the obstacles preventing you from delivering a great customer experience. Don’t let your current processes drive customers to a competitor instead.

Here are three things to consider this festive season:

Make Things Easier for Your Team on the Phone

When taking payments over the phone, are you fully aware of how many steps are involved? Do staff need to log into a different system, write card details down, or ask the customer to wait as they stop the call recording? This all takes up valuable time and can be open to mistakes.

For any temporary Christmas staff, using unfamiliar systems and engaging with impatient callers can be a daunting experience. How much time do you really have to train new members of the team, keeping an eye on their call quality and troubleshooting issues?

With a secure payment facility embedded into your contact centre system, the process is smooth and very easy to use. No separate logins, no need to secure the call, and most importantly – your customers don’t need to read sensitive card details out loud to a stranger over the phone. You’ve just supercharged the level of payment security for your organization.

Keep Recording Your Calls Securely and Reduce Human Error

For call recording, some over-the-phone payment systems require staff to manually pause the recording as customers read out their card details. Sometimes staff can forget to do this, immediately leaving an audio file in your network containing very sensitive payment details. Using the telephone keypad to enter card details isn’t foolproof either. Each key press gives out a unique tone (known as DTMF tones), which can be deciphered by those who are clever and determined enough.

The solution? Take any sensitive audio out of the loop completely. No spoken numbers and no keypad presses. Using a technology called DTMF suppression allows you to record the entire call from start to finish, including every step of the payment process. No need to pause and resume, and no need to worry about recording sensitive details. Less pressure for you and your agents!

Fighting Back Against Fraud

Last but certainly not least… protect your customers and your organization. 2022 has seen a huge roll-out of some long-awaited payment security directives (PSD2 and 3DS2), which may present some extra security checks to customers looking to pay with their credit or debit cards. The last thing your customers want during the Christmas period is to deal with refused payments, having to verify transactions with the bank’s fraud department, or even worse…. waiting for new cards to come through the post.

By using our services, you can be assured your company will be fully compliant with any new payment legislation and regulation, and sensitive customers’ payment details are removed from any data breach risk – they’re not even there to steal!

Details are processed securely there and then when the agent is talking to the customer, without being stored on your network. I can assure you, your IT team will be more than grateful for that.

Plan for the Christmas Rush

Be prepared for the Christmas rush with a secure and reliable payment service. Talk to my team about your contact centre challenges and if our Agent Assisted Payment solution is right for you. Call +1 (929) 230 1185 or email us at sales@keyivr.com