all aboard the payment process
What’s In, What’s Out and What’s a Must?Sure, onboarding has been a mandatory area of focus for merchants ever since the introduction of modern payment technology some ten years ago. Attaching a dongle to your smartphone was considered by some a fad that will never catch on, but some saw the potential and the inevitable changes the innovation would bring.
Customers Value Speed
Paypal has demonstrated how onboarding a merchant in five minutes or less - as opposed to three and five days that was traditional - is a major draw for customers. Quick and easy onboarding, along with providing good security solutions and easy payments options, is what customers flock to. SMEs that skip this lose customers and business.
This is why software companies have an advantage over traditional acquirers; they are able to automate the merchant boarding process. This automation was possible because software companies would perform far fewer checks of onboarding merchants.
The aforementioned PayPal could therefore onboard in five minutes, and so could other popular service providers, such as Stripe or Square. Today, this is standard, so what else should SMEs look for?
Diversity Rules
The main
question is how to balance efficient onboarding with the quality of
your offerings. Competition today is, of course, fiercer than ever. MSPs work
hard not only to provide their clients with the best service possible but also to
offer a wide range of services.
And it is here that an MSP can truly set itself apart from its competitors. The word used often is "stickiness", meaning that more products on offer increase the chances of attracting and retaining clients. As technology develops, MSPs are expected to both improve their existing offerings as well as create new ones.
Source: Payments Cards & Mobile
Little Things Make All the Difference
Money is
always an issue with SMEs, therefore, they will always be looking for the best
possible ratio of price to quality and quantity of service offered by a
prospective MSP. Good customer service is at the top, of course: fast,
reliable and always on-call.
Bundling is
proving to be an excellent solution for MSPs. Put several products and services
together, tie them up with a proverbial bow by aiming them at a particular
segment of your target clients and selling them as "tailored to
your needs", and you will reap the benefits once your potential
clients become actual clients, drawn in by the feeling that an MSP has created the
offer specially for them.
Lack of
friction means many customers will be relaxed enough to spend more than they
perhaps would have using cash. Thus, many SMEs prefer the ability to create and
send offers with a link that their customers can use to pay in full or an
advance, thus simplifying both reservations and sales.
Since cash
payments in such situations are slower, friction is once again greatly reduced
with card payments, leading to customer satisfaction.
A good
user interface is also important: one that provides data on daily
sales from both physical and online retail locations is often cited as a draw
for SMEs, as it is an easy process for placing new items and services on sale.
In fact, data on sales and customer activity can be of great help to an SME,
and MSPs should consider focusing on providing them with tools for such
analytics when upgrading their service.
Being Flexible in the world wide web
Flexibility
is the key for MSPs when approaching both their offerings and the way they are
presented to potential clients. In other words, professionally made
sites that are easy to navigate will be a boon when it comes to
increasing onboarding. A wide presence is also important.
For
example, payments company Worldpay partnered with Amazon and in doing so
allowed the retail giant to place its Amazon Pay at the fingertips of over a
million US merchants, along with already present payment options of Visa, Mastercard
and American Express.
However, even though offering more services will lead to acquiring more
clients, balance must also come into play.
Importantly, this could also allow Amazon to layer on further services into the mix for merchants, which could potentially include netting third-party merchants into its popular Amazon Prime subscription scheme for free shipping and more.
The Amazon Effect - The Future or Not?
There is
also the "Amazon Effect", a phenomenon where the rise of
online marketplaces has led to customers becoming used to going to one place
for their needs. Why it was named as such is obvious: if you can buy books,
DVDs, T-shirts and lawnmowers at the same retailer, you are also very likely to
reach for them for anything else.
However, most can't afford to even attempt at becoming a new Amazon and should be careful not to spread themselves too thin. Quantity is good but if the quality of offerings begins to suffer because the MSP is primarily focused on providing "more" without considering if it's also good, they may discover their business failing.
As far as online retail experiences go, virtual malls should also be taken into consideration. The idea behind this was simple: provide shoppers with an online replica of a real-world mall experience.
There, they could take a virtual walk
from one shop to another, visit anything from pharmacies to banks, clothes
stores and bookshops.
But while a
compelling idea on paper, the realization of a virtual mall encounters several
problems. Many people find it hard to navigate them using a virtual person, and
there have been many security concerns regarding the theft of personal and
account information.
Both these issues make a simple SMB online store - or Amazon - much
more preferable.