Too early to mention Christmas?

If you’re a retailer, you’ll no doubt have begun planning your Christmas sales period. For many, the busiest time of year requires months of organisation to ensure that products and stock are ready and teams fully prepared. But what about your card payment processing?

The number of card-not-present (or CNP) transactions has been on the rise for many years, further compounded more recently by the Covid pandemic forcing consumers away from physical shops to online and mail order/telephone order retailers and service providers. Despite the lifting of Covid restrictions, it is likely that many will choose to continue purchasing over the phone or internet as this Christmas approaches.

With this in mind, does your business have the systems and processes in place to handle this change in consumer behaviour? Is your card payment process fit for purpose and able to adapt to the busy period and the rise in demand? If you’re not sure it is, then now is the time to upgrade it, and here’s why.

Support omni-channel sales

Expand your reach to more customers by increasing the number of ways that they can access and pay for your goods and services. We’ve recently worked with a number of new clients looking at additional and alternative card payment methods such as over webchat and social media as a means of gaining that competitive edge by making your business more easily accessible and improving customer satisfaction. Linking these payment channels under one umbrella system makes them easier to manage, increases the number of transactions processed at a time and ensures the delivery of a standardised, consistent service to customers across the board.

Improve efficiency and productivity

In addition to expanding your reach, you can improve your productivity and efficiency by using your card payment process to integrate with back-end systems such as CRM database, stock monitoring and accounting. This saves you time to focus your attention on delivery of high standard customer service.

Protect your customers from data breach and your business from card fraud

The surge in transactions and sales brings with it increased risk of falling victim to cyber crime. Hackers are on the prowl for weaknesses appearing in systems, taking advantage of businesses that are both too busy and distracted and/or with inexperienced or temporary seasonal staff in place.  According to UK Finance, online fraud against UK retailers totalled an estimated £262.3 million in 2020 while mail or telephone order (MOTO) fraud against retailers totalled £63.7 million. You can protect your business from card fraud and data breach by ensuring that you adhere to guidelines set out in the PCI DSS, or better still, implement a PCI compliant external processing system to make your transaction environment even more robust.

 

At PCI Telecom, we create card payment processing solutions that are bespoke to the needs of your business, be it for single or multi-channel payment methods – over the phone, auto IVR, online, via webchat, social media or email. Being cloud-based, our solutions are flexible, simple to install and easy to use, plus being PCI compliant to Level 1 standard, you can rest assured that your customers’ card data is protected. And there’s still time to get sorted for Christmas! For more information, visit our Solutions page or get in touch to discuss your needs.