The Benefits of Employing an IVR Payment System using ACH and Credit Card Processing

Ease of IVR menu flow configuration and editing.

Legacy IVR systems can require developer assets to be used from the IVR payments partner when initially configuring a menu and IVR workflow and subsequent edits should the menu flow require a change. In many cases these can be extremely expensive to the using organization. We have heard instances where a using organization was quoted thousands of dollars to change from using a text to speech engine to using their own recorded voice talent. It should have be be as such.

Agile Payments has been supplying various types of payments related tools for 20+ years, and one of those tools is Interactive Voice Response which allows companies to collect payments over the phone using automated IVR Payment technology.

Call center payment processing varies from organization to organization in terms of how it is managed, but the most used methods are from one of the following methods:

78% of consumers have reported making at least one payment per month via phone payments, with 60% preferring our phones to make payments. This means storage facilities are in a prime position to utilize an IVR Payments system in 2020.

The public utilities and municipalities realm is experiencing a major increase in electronic payments. With 79% of consumers expecting local service providers to offer same level service as national brands, an electronic payments system that handles credit cards/ACH payments is a necessity in 2020. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is a simple, effective way for your waste management business to provide more thorough customer service.

Pay by Text payment solutions offer businesses a simple, cost effective method to securely collect customer payments.

Marketing products or services via mass media to consumers can result in an enormous number of consumer responses, sometimes flooding a call center or even some IVR systems. If the media used is television or radio, the consumer responses arrive at a narrow, but predictable time, further challenging an IVR system's capabilities. Having an IVR system that can handle the call load is just one critical issue that media marketers face in fulfilling their customer orders and accepting consumer payments.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has been around for quite a while now, and it's use for payments acceptance has grown significantly in recent years. With recent advents in IVR systems along with increased cell phone adoption, businesses and organizations now have more tools to bill their customers and collect and accept late payments by phone.

Best IVR Payment Systems: What to look for in your IVR Payment search

An IVR Payment Solution creates new customer option that allows customers to pay bills or invoices without involving business staff or resources. Customers dial into a  phone and connect to an automated IVR system that interacts via voice prompts with the caller, allowing them to pay amounts due without human interaction from the business side.

IVR Transactions: Interactive Voice Response for Inbound Customer Payment Transactions

IVR Transactions occur when customers call into an IVR Payment Solution.

IVR Payment Software: What are your options in your IVR Payment Solution search

IVR Payment  Software Solutions offer payment options that allow clients to pay bills or invoices via self service. Customers dial into a  phone and connect to an automated IVR system and interact via voice prompts, allowing customers them to pay amounts due without human interaction from the business side.

PCI Compliant IVR Payment Gateway Solutions – Interactive Voice Response for Phone Based Customer Payments

An IVR Gateway provides automated phone based payment acceptance solution for organizations.

PCI Compliant IVR Tokenization Solutions – Interactive Voice Response for Phone Based Customer Payments

Credit card data is required to be handled in a PCI compliant manner. IVR Tokenization is the process that securely exchanges full credit card number for a non-sensitive replacement value in an IVR Payment Solution.

IVR Billing - 24/7/365 Automated Customer Payment Center

IVR Phone Payments- 24/7/365 Automated Customer Payment Center

Text payment solutions offer businesses a fantastic tool for automating payment and especially late payment collection.

An insurance company looking to streamline payments by phone had the following issues:

• The insurance company was looking to provide excellent customer service, but the volume of calls received made doing this a difficult challenge. The Insurance company’s most frequent calls were from clients making payments. Agents spent significant time processing payments manually, resulting in expanded average call handling and hold times. The Insurance company was looking to automate this process.
• Automating payments meant that the Insurance company had to have a PCI compliant solution that did not expose sensitive card data.
• The Insurance company sought to drive down operating costs while balancing superior customer service.

The Solution

• The Insurance company integrated the AgilePayments IVR platform to build a user-friendly workflow to handle its payment processing needs. The AgilePayments solution offered a modular, intuitive solution build, customized to the Insurance company needs.
• The Insurance company’s application was built and deployed in AgilePayments secure, PCI-compliant network. This allowed the Insurance company to utilize the AgilePayments platform to both operate and maintain a secure environment to process critical customer financial data.
• Data analysis and tracking allowed the Insurance company to measure automation rates and to monitor how customers used the IVR payment application.

Results

• Following deployment of the Insurance company payment IVR application, close to 90% of payment-related calls were handled by the automated IVR payment system. This reduced average cost per call from over $4 to about 30 cents, or over 90% reduction in costs.

Utilizing AgilePayments IVR platforms enable Insurance companies to significantly improve their customer service offerings while at the same time dramatically reducing costs. With an automated payment application in place, live agents spend more time providing high-touch service for customer inquiries.

SMS Payment Provider | Pay by Text Provider 2019

Businesses that have employed Interactive Voice Response technologies for acceptance of payments are generally more familiar with an IVR solution that focuses on inbound calls. Inbound IVR Payments do a wonderful job at eliminating customer service time spent on the phone where they provide customers their invoice amounts and details about the receivables, then collecting payment information where they enter it into whatever payment origination software that they are using for processing. 

Agile Payments has been providing IVR payment solutions to the U.S. market for quite a while. Canadian companies have also been able to utilize IVR payments from Agile Payments for the same time period except for one small problem; they haven't been able to utilize the eCheck (eCheque) payment rail. Canadian businesses and organizations can now enjoy the same benefits that U.S. companies have been benefitting from in utilizing the ACH network. In Canada it is referred to as the EFT network. 

Using an Electronic Funds Transfer Canada Solution can save significant time and money while offering customers a new payment option.

Interactive voice response technology allows humans to interact with computers, effectively replacing a human on one side of the equation. A company's customers can utilize this technology for paying invoices or amounts due without the need for a human customer service agent to be on the phone from the company's side. IVR payments technology doesn't take vacation days and doesn't call in sick. It's working all the time, 24/7. While there's a cost to implementing IVR for payment remittance, it's far less expensive than human customer service agents staffing those calls. That's where the first benefit is found; reducing customer service expenses in collecting receivables, which leads to a healthier bottom-line.

When an organization is employing IVR Payments, there are two payment modals commonly used; Credit cards (including debit cars) and ACH payments. ACH payments (aka, eChecks) don't have any NACHA restrictions on service fees, which are also known as convenience fees or surcharges. Credit cards are a bit trickier. More on that later.

Interactive Voice Response systems have been around for a while now - and they have improved greatly from the early days of operation. No longer do companies have to worry about inaccuraccies and slow processing times with IVR technology. The robust IVR systems of today have lead more and more companies to adopt Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for various customer service related needs.