More than just a buzzword, research undertaken by industry analysts like Forrester demonstrates how businesses that increase customer satisfaction scores, even by just a single point, are more successful.
Alongside building long-term customer loyalty, these brands were found to consistently outperform their competitors in terms of revenue growth, profitability, reduced customer churn and improved brand perception. They were also able to reduce the costs associated with customer acquisition and retention.
In other words, the delivery of positive customer experiences is a proven way for organizations to build lasting customer loyalty and achieve long-term and sustainable brand success.
Positive customer experiences contribute to the success of a business
Good customer experiences have a positive impact on top line revenue, and Forrester’s surveys have found that consumers are willing to pay a premium for a good experience with a brand.
With today’s consumers using multiple and concurrent channels to search for, evaluate, and purchase goods and services, embedding customer-centricity at every stage of a customer journey and at every touchpoint will be vital. But that’s not all!
Recent Gartner research reveals that 74% of customers increasingly expect more from brands. Not just in terms of the quality of their products and services but also in relation to how they treat customers. Meanwhile, in today’s challenging times, issues like dependability and brand trust are rapidly rising in importance for consumers.
While trust isn’t easy to gain, it’s very easy to lose. Let’s take a look at what’s important to customers, and why.
What it takes to earn customer trust
Today’s consumers have very high expectations and expect to be hand-held at every step along their journey.
No matter how good your products or services may be, building customer trust increasingly depends on delivering exceptional experiences at every engagement point and doing what is right for the customer.
For many consumers that includes:
- Being able to transact securely in their preferred channel (online, mobile, voice, social, self-service or webchat), with streamlined processes at every touchpoint
- Being confident that their data is being managed and used responsibly
- Dealing with organizations that are always reachable, reliable, and easy to engage with
- Easy access to joined-up and convenient services
- A transaction experience that is straightforward and frictionless
In addition to these requirements, the realities of today’s hyper connected world mean that consumers say that data privacy and security represents a growing concern for them.
Bombarded by daily news stories about data breaches, cyber-attacks, ID theft and fraud, consumers feel increasingly wary about the potential transaction perils they face. As a result, they want to know that their personal data is safe and that the organizations they interact with are committed to safeguarding their data.
That’s especially true when it comes to payment transactions. In an era where consumer mistrust is on the rise, building transaction experiences based on trust depends on providing a visible and comprehensive approach to fraud prevention and data security.
This creates a dilemma for organizations. How do you effectively protect payment transactions without making the process itself too cumbersome for customers?
Best practices for delivering trusted payment experiences
- Meet your compliance requirements – industry requirements such as PCI DSS require you to meet rigorous security standards designed to keep customer card data safe from fraud during transactions. Merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit cardholder data must maintain the security of payment related customer information, design security protocols for payments and manage risk related to payment programs. Failure to comply puts you at risk of hefty fines, will have significant legal repercussions, and a devastating impact on customer trust.
- Address your privacy obligations – PCI DSS is just the tip of the iceberg where privacy mandates and data breach exposure laws are concerned. Regulations such as GDPR exist in most regions of the world and most highlight the particular importance of financial and payment related data.
- Protect your brand reputation – data breaches are damaging to your reputation and will discourage consumers from doing business with you. By initiating secure payment processing, you can protect your brand image and maintain trust with consumers.
- Understand customer needs – whether customers are heading online to make one-time payments using their bank account or credit card, or calling into a contact center, they will expect to encounter a consistent and intuitive user experience. Plus, no matter how they pay, the entire transaction experience needs to be seamless. That means not being transferred to a third-party website or waiting to be transferred to a specialist payment team in the contact center.
- Offer secure payments via every channel – when it comes to online payments, you need to make it easy for customers to undertake secure transactions in the channel of their choice. For many that may mean receiving a secure payment link via an app, an e-mail, SMS, or social media that enables them to complete their transaction immediately.
Deliver trusted and frictionless payment transactions with Sycurio
When it comes to diligently protecting customer data and visibility demonstrating how your organization takes payment security seriously, Sycurio’s solutions make it easy to build trust at every touchpoint.
Eliminating the cost and complexity of PCI DSS compliance, our solutions enable your customers’ payment transaction experiences to flow seamlessly across every channel. Plus, they free up your people to focus on delivering excellent customer service.
Our PCI DSS Level 1 service provider infrastructure ensures that no card or bank information is ever exposed to your agents, systems, or networks. Plus, our solutions provide a secure payment method for every interaction point – contact centers, IVRs, bots, SMS, chat and messaging applications, e-mail, and social media.
From voice solutions that enable customers to enter their card or bank payment numbers directly into their phone keypad, through to secure standalone digital payment links that can be embedded into a variety of customer-facing channels, we enable streamlined and convenient payment transaction experiences that deliver true peace of mind for customers.
With consumers becoming increasingly concerned about how organizations operating in every industry sector process and store their payment data during transactions, Sycurio makes it simplicity itself to offer the frictionless payment experiences that will build trust and lasting customer loyalty.
