You’re a contact center that needs to take payments; your challenge is how you take such payments in a secure and compliant manner while avoiding the introduction of complexity and frustration for both your customers and agents.
The good news is this is possible, taking secure payments does not have to be complicated, and if you follow these simple steps, it can positively impact both the customer and the agent experience.
Step One: accommodate all channels
Every contact center is on a journey to provide the customer with a true omnichannel experience, the ability to interact with customers in their preferred way whether that be by phone, chat, email, or SMS. This omnichannel experience needs to extend into payments. The last thing you want to do is ask the customer using web chat to dial into your contact center to make a payment, or at the crucial part of a phone conversation to be transferred to another team, or worse still, asked to visit a payment website.
You need to look at putting in place a single payment solution that can consistently operate across both voice and digital channels. This ensures that transactions can be completed during a single interaction, avoiding call backs or transfers and streamlining the whole process.
Such a solution needs to support both click to pay and key to pay capabilities. In terms of click to pay, this is where the customer is sent a secure link over digital channels to complete the payment. With key to pay, the customer is speaking to an agent and can simply use their phone keypad to enter their payment details securely.
Step Two: don’t break the conversation
The payment process is a critical moment of truth in the customer journey; it is where they complete the transaction and your efforts are rewarded. If there was ever a time they need the agent to guide them through a process it is here, so why leave them to fend for themselves?
The key is that you put in place a solution that enables you to continue to talk or chat with the customer while they complete the process. Even better is if the solution you use shows the agent the customer’s progress step by step. Even though the agent cannot see any sensitive information, they can see that the customer has missed a digit off a card number or entered an invalid expiration date and can help the customer. In the case of a declined payment, they are able to quickly step the customer through utilizing an alternative payment method.
Step Three: simplify compliance
Your customers need to trust that making a payment through your contact center is secure and they will not fall victim to future fraud. The best way to do this is to follow best practice and this means being compliant with PCI DSS standards.
Rather than attempting to implement all of the requirements of PCI DSS across your internal systems such as the way you collect, process, and store payment information, the best approach is to utilize a platform that is already compliant.
This effectively reduces the scope of compliance. Customer payment details never enter your organization or systems; they are captured and processed by a platform that is designed to be secure and compliant.
For organizations looking to ensure that the way they take payments from customers in their contact centers is secure and compliant, a proven, specialist solution can make life so much easier. The complexity is taken care of for you, the payment process is streamlined, points of friction removed, and a far better experience delivered to both the customer and the agent.
To discuss how PCI Pal can help you simplify payments in your contact center, simply reach out to our team. Contact Us.
