In Brief: Successful payments integration is not a set it and forget it process. It is an ongoing journey, rich with opportunities for improvement and growth as you become more attuned to the evolving needs of your customers. This article explores how to take the next steps in building a fruitful integrated payments partnership.
Planting a garden is an exciting time, but seasoned gardeners know that the work doesn’t stop there. It needs ongoing attention and cultivation, but the payoff is worth it.
Integrating payments into your software is a little like that. As a software provider, successfully deploying integrated payments can be instantly fulfilling. But you can’t stop with the initial gains in operational efficiency and customer experience, though. Ongoing optimization is key to maximizing the rewards of integrated payments for you and your customers alike.
No matter how well you planned your integrated payments deployment, business conditions change, technology changes, your customers’ needs change so there’s always room for improvement.
Below are three key areas that need ongoing nurturing to ensure you are realizing the full benefit potential of your integrated payments program.
1. Drive Customer Adoption
The first thing after launching your integrated payments program is to get customers to adopt your new payment capability. Payment adoption has a direct impact on customer satisfaction and your revenue stream. So focusing on it early is important.
Use Cross-Channel Marketing Communications
Announcements across multiple channels are effective. Consider banners or popups on your website, and perhaps even a dedicated page with FAQs and user guides explaining how customers can take advantage of this new capability. Make email announcements to your customer list and include it in your newsletter and via social media.
This is a good opportunity not only to tell potential users that integrated payments are available, but to also draw attention to their benefits. Highlight the convenience of being able to complete transactions more quickly without leaving the software platform. Use this opportunity to tell users about how the integrated payment system’s built-in security features protect their valuable financial data. This will help to build customer trust, which is a powerful tool in drawing people to your platform.
Among the most successful marketing tactics is social proof; as customers begin using your integrated payments, inviting testimonials from them can create more buzz. A webinar that showcases a customer success story or a video in which customers describe how your payments integration has impacted their business is valuable.
2. Monitor the Customer Experience
An integrated payment deployment in a software product might be expertly done, but there is always something extra you can do to evolve your program. As payment options evolve and as integrated payment partners introduce new functionality, there are ample opportunities to enhance the payment experience, making it more seamless and flexible for customers.
Ease of Use
Understanding how requirements are changing among your customers’ users will give you valuable insights into how you can mold payment workflows and options over time. This means creating a dialog with customers as you assess their experiences across several areas.
Customers can tell you a lot about ease of use, both explicitly and implicitly. For example, you can solicit input through customer surveys and feedback forms for quantitative and qualitative intelligence about their experience and ways to improve. It never hurts to stay in touch with your customers.
Evaluate Service and Support
There are other elements you can track to evaluate the customer experience. One of these is the level of service and support your customers are receiving. Look at how quickly and easily your customers can get their questions answered and issues resolved. This will depend in part on the nature of the support channel, which could range from phone support through to online and self-service support.
You can learn a lot via interactions logged with customer support. What kinds of payment-related service issues are arising, and how frequently? How quickly are these issues getting resolved? How is this affecting your customer satisfaction scores?
Keep Tabs on Pricing and Fees
The fees your merchant customers pay for payment processing directly affects their experience. Admittedly, there is a fine line here. On one hand, the higher the fees, the greater your revenue share, which is a good thing. On the other hand, if the fees are too high, you won’t have those customers for very long so the revenue won’t matter anyway.
A common practice in the payments industry is to start low then quickly climb. Whether you are setting the pricing or your payment partner sets it, it’s always a good idea to make sure your customers are being charged a fair, competitive rate for your integrated payments program.
3. Continuous Improvement
Create a cycle of improvement by staying in tune with your customers and their business needs. Also, work closely with your payments partner to ensure they offer the latest in payment technology, payment channels, methods, and related features. Together, these will help to guide strategic improvements in your software’s integrated payment capabilities.
Expanding Functionality
One common need that customers raise is alternative payment options such as mobile wallets and text to pay. Depending on your industry, users might begin asking for more functionality such as one-click payments, repeat and recurring payments, and buy now pay later (BNPL) capabilities or added methods of payments such as ACH and E-check.
While customers can tell you a lot about their needs, there might also be things they don’t know they need because they’re unaware of them. This is where partnerships between software companies and their integrated service providers can be especially helpful. Keeping track of what’s happening in the payments industry can help you introduce new features and operational improvements that will continue to delight your customers.
It’s Time to Water the Garden
You’ve already sown fruitful seeds in rich soil by making the decision to integrate payment capabilities. Now, build on that investment by working closely with your payment partner to refine your program and enhance customer benefits. Essential to this collaboration is having the right integrated payments provider. Your partner should play an active role in the design of your program and its ongoing enhancement to maximize the impact of payments on your business and that of your customers.
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