Digital asynchronous communication is all well and good, but when a service is truly premium, we want a human being managing it behind it. This is especially noticeable in the event of any incident, when telephone communication becomes the preferred method of communication. The interesting thing for a business is to know which part of its service should be kept in human hands, and which part can be automated.
It may seem like an off-topic thought, but if we work with recurring transactions, customer service is a success factor that cannot be sacrificed. And this is something that any company offering a subscription service is well aware of. However, the payment of this service can be managed by machines better than by people. We explain.
One thing is the service and another is the payment.
If you talk to any company that offers a subscription service or a pay-as-you-go service, they will tell you that managing recurring payments can become a source of problems that can minimize profits. Or, if the payments are small, the business model is compromised.
In other words, some subscription or on-demand services that involve small transactions or microtransactions (such as an online press subscription, an audiovisual product platform or a comprehensive “all-inclusive” energy consumption service) have a real problem in the management of payments.
And the problem is that it is not profitable to deal with all the problems associated with payments (commissions, incidents, disputes, etc.). Rice is more expensive than chicken, to put it colloquially. But the problem is not in the telephone service (which is a plus for the customer), but in the recurring payment management system!
Automated recurring payments…
Of course there are solutions for this. Today, state-of-the-art technologies are moving in the direction of automation as far as payment systems are concerned. That is why it is possible for us to move through the maze of monetized websites, e-commerce platforms, payment gateways between banks, financial service providers, product and service companies and customers.
To get a general idea, in any subscription service the whole process is automated once the payment order is issued. And in principle that should be all… But if we ask companies that sell services or products by subscription we will know that the reality is different, and that having someone on the phone is practically an obligation.
It is logical, understandable and even positive to dedicate our talent to customer service and technical support; it is not so logical to dedicate it to routine administrative tasks derived from payment management, something that, despite this automation, whether outsourced or assumed internally, has a significant cost.
In many cases, especially in the digital environment, this has to do first and foremost with friction between channels. It happens when (for example) the customer subscribes to a service via the Internet, but if there is a problem, he prefers the telephone as a communication channel, which is quite normal. And a dissatisfied customer, you know….
…without giving up the telephone
So, instead of setting limits for ourselves, why don’t we remove them? Payment by telephone by card has the virtue of allowing the customer to interact with us through the same channel (and without having to give up other channels, on the contrary), either to contract a service or to adjust the payment conditions of the same.
In many business models and for certain customer profiles (and not necessarily elderly and technology refractory people, far from it), this type of communication is the preferred one. If the problem is complicated and you have little time to waste, do you prefer the telephone or not? From a business perspective, this means one thing: less friction.
But that’s not the main virtue of automated telephone payment, it’s security. In our scheme, the customer can talk to the operator (be it sales agent, customer service or technical support) and without cutting off the communication be forwarded to an automated operator to enter the data and complete the transaction.