Find the Right Credit Card Processer for Your Small Business

Owning or managing a small business can take up a massive amount of time and effort. Typically, small business owners tend to initially focus on developing their product or service, getting the pricing and marketing on target, managing the financials, and just generally surviving and staying afloat. It’s easy to sometimes miss certain crucial factors, such as important customer preferences, needs and wants.

Staying In Sync with Your Customers

While customer service may get its share of attention, this sometimes comes in the form of a more of a generalist attitude rather than the more organized, deeper, and purposeful understanding of customer behavior and trends that may be ideal. After all, staying in step with target customers is vital for any business to survive, grow, and stay healthy.

• For almost any business, retaining customers is more profitable than acquiring new ones: Building and keeping even 5% of a loyal population of customers can boost your profits by at least 25%. Studies show that 67% of repeat customers spend more on your brand and this means lowered spending on operating costs.
• Customers share their experiences: With the social media boom, small business owners are exposed more to reviews, feedback and opinions regarding their goods, services and ease of doing business.  Even a single experience can significantly affect loyalty either positively or negatively.
• They’re willing to pay a little more: Another study shows that 86% of customers don’t mind paying up to 25% more when they’re provided with premium-quality customer service.
• Customers are your best brand ambassadors: Referrals and recommendations from delighted customers are great opportunities to upsell, cross-sell, introduce new products/innovations, and share important business information.
• Customer expectations: Tech-savvy and not-so-tech-savvy customers have certain expectations when it comes to payment options. If you don’t provide easy, quick, safe and convenient payment options, many of them may move on to another business that accommodates their needs.

Partnering With the Right Credit Card Processing Provider

Get recommendations from trustworthy sources in your area of business to select the right card processing service provider. Important aspects to consider include the following:

• Cost Benefit Analysis: Understand the nature, extent and scope of your business. This can be compared to the pros and cons, expenses and real time aspects of providing credit card payment facilities to customers.
• Fees and charges: Read the terms & conditions section carefully. Fees can include equipment fees, transaction processing fees, early termination, administration fees and statement fees, although if you partner with the right processor, you may be able to avoid many of these fees entirely.
• Familiarity: Select service providers who deal with others in your area of business.
• Security and Support: Choose processors offering 24x7x365 technical support and hotline with customer service reps familiar with your kind of business. They should provide 100% encryption of customer transaction details and personal information with enhanced security features to deter fraud, cybercrime, and identity theft.
• Options: Credit card processing companies you choose should offer a range of credit card payment options.

For more information on how to find the right credit card processing provider for your small business, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.