Trust. Hard to earn. Easy to lose.
We’ve all heard this. Not a difficult concept to grasp and hard to ignore as the evening news shows vivid reminders of the fallout when trust is not protected. Relationships — among family, friends, and global powers — get pushed to a breaking point when trust gets sidelined in favor of other pursuits.
Trust and a high-quality customer experience are closely intertwined, particularly in the context of digital payment applications. Payment companies embrace their role as stewards of digital trust but maintaining an exceptional customer experience brings unique challenges in such a demanding, fast-moving sector.
It’s inevitable all companies will hit a few rough patches over time. And while upstarts may enjoy a short-lived “honeymoon” phase, consumers test the limits of what any company, nascent or not, can deliver.
Get good when it’s bad
Flawless financial transactions rarely earn social media accolades. Friends seldom rave that their share of the dinner tab transferred properly, and merchants don’t throw parades when they’re paid in timely fashion.
But when a problem arises and it’s resolved swiftly, completely, and with full transparency, customers do a double-take. They become evangelists of the payments platform because lifting that dark cloud of a money problem is big.
The opportunity for digital payments providers to distinguish themselves is on the front lines with customer care associates who are knowledgeable, supported by the resources and tools needed to resolve an issue, trained to listen, and behave with empathy and respect. Elevate your workforce to professionally handle any issue, particularly fraud concerns, and customer confidence will rise along with NPS scores. And the base will grow.
Optimism is the springboard
Consumers are bullish about their growing reliance on digital wallets. More than 75% of Americans trust digital as much as — or more than — traditional payments like cash and credit/debit cards, according to Motley Fool’s survey of digital payment app users.
There are number of levers to pull to capitalize on this momentum and ensure the best customer experience:
- Better training can resolve more than 2/3 of merchant complaints, according to TTEC research based on TrustPilot ratings. Among the common core CX complaints we see among both merchants and consumers: Rude/unprofessional behavior, lack of knowledge, lack of support resources, language/communication issues, and funds withheld/accounts restricted erroneously.
- Intelligent fraud automation can assuage both buyers and sellers who feel payments platforms rule in the other party’s favor, leaving both camps feeling they have little protection against scammers. Together with our partners, TTEC devises systems to automatically flag malicious bots, unverified comments/reviews and with the help of artificial intelligence, uncover fraud overlooked by human fraud teams.
- Performance analytics leverages AI to analyze and interpret all customer interactions — 100% versus the more typical 3% to 5% — to identify repeating problems and devise strategies to mitigate them. One of our clients saw productivity soar 97% when speech and text analytics revealed how customized coaching could produce dramatic results.
- Channel optimization: Digital payments users often cannot locate a phone number to call to speak to someone to resolve an issue. TTEC can show how to optimize customer support in all channels and to personalize interactions according to user preferences.
- Smart bot deployment: “Bot is useless” is a common user complaint. TTEC has refined its AI-enhanced bots over many years and we know a bot is the not the answer for all circumstances. Through exhaustive assessments, we identify how and where bots should be deployed and when a human associate is required instead.
- Communications: TTEC’s global network of contact centers cater to customers across many geographies. Our AI-voice enhancement solutions eliminate distracting background noises on both ends of a phone conversation, giving the caller confidence the associate has their undivided attention. For example, accent localization dynamically modifies an associate’s accent, in real time, to more closely match the native accent and speaking cadence of the customer. There are many new solutions now available to break down communications barriers that have long burdened contact centers.
Consumers and merchants alike want to feel confident payments providers will have their backs when a grievance arises and that resolution will be handled professionally — with integrity, honesty. fairness, and transparency. Despite growing adoption of digital payments, trust remains the most frequently cited motivator determining which digital financial services platform a consumer or merchant will choose.
Without a robust CX strategy, well-trained and well-supported workforce, the base will defect to those platforms investing in the customer experience for the long term.
