eCommerce Integration with CRM a must in today’s environment.
Credit Card Processor can mean many things to many different businesses so it is easy to be confused. The trick is there is and always will be innovative ways to pay for goods and services, it is having them integrated into a goo CRM system is what pays off. In our view a ‘Credit Card Processor’ is any or all of the following : Any third party company that your company uses to process credit cards from Sales to Customers. Different Card Processors have different offerings such as Shopping Carts, Virtual Terminals, On Premise Card Processing, Online Card Processing, eCommerceTools, Merchant Accounts, etc. Common Card Processors include the major Credit Card companies such as Visa, Mastercard, etc provide merchant accounts directly to businesses, while third party Merchant Account services such as PayPal, Google Checkout, Digital River, FastSpring.com, etc allow your customers to pay for your products via credit card, physical Mailed check, eCheck, Wire Transfer, ACH, Invoice as a service to your business, and they process the payment, and the charge appears on your Customers’ statement with the Merchant of Record being the Paypal (or whatever vendor you used). Paypal et al then holds the funds for a period of time, then send the payment to you. There is also NFC technology letting you pay using your Smart Phone like the Apple IPhone and the Google Android phones and Paypal has also recently thrown their hat in the the NFC ring.
These days ECommerce is a snap with the real time Integration of the CRM with an online purchase form, the CRM handles the processing of the credit cards, as it is integrated tightly with the Credit Card Processor (such as Authorize.net). If the order is placed, the CRM automatically converts the Lead to an Order, Creates an Invoice, logs the payment against the invoice, generates a receipt, and then CRM sends out the invoice along with a welcome email or social welcome message. The customer is then dropped automatically into a drip marketing campaign to receive the newsletter, promotions, news via automated Email Marketing Campaign. Dashboards, Reporting and Analytics as well as KPIs are available at the point of a click to determine what is working or not during the entire Web Purchase process.
These technologies are being used today by one person operations all the way up to the largest Enterprises. It is On Demand, easy to use, and comes with a coach dedicated to your business, and who has done this thing many times. What was mere hopes 5 years ago is business as usual today, and your customers are expecting it, so why not make the purchase process just as easy on the customer as any other process in your business? You may find by implementing new process in your Ecommerce, it just might go a long way in improving your overall Customer experience.
The next big thinh is Near Fields Communication (NFC) – many new smartphones come equipped with a chip that makes your cell phone a wallet, allowing you to swipe it at a terminal and not have to carry around a bunch of cards. The Near Field part means you have to unlock your phone, and many of tehm come with fingerprint scanning apps to verify it is you, so much more secure than cards as well. Notably, the Iphone 5 didn’t include NFC whereas most new phones have it. Paypal and Google wallet, and all major credit cards are moving this way, but it will take time for the vendors to get setup to accept this type of payment method.