Since returning to ‘business-as-usual’ after the pandemic had motivated contact centres to enable their teams to work from home, the industry has found itself amid a chronic staffing shortage that’s led to intense recruitment competition, more choice for employees, and demand for higher wages & better conditions. This predicament is set to worsen over the next decade, as the ‘baby boom’ generation now head into retirement at double the rate that education leavers enter the workforce.  The result will be an overall shrinkage of the UK workforce approaching 10% by 2028, with no signs yet that the steady annual increase in demand will slow down.

Contact centre management have always been under pressure to cut handle time and raise productivity wherever possible, and what better way than to shave valuable time from interactions while making it easy, fast, convenient & secure to collect payments from customers by phone or over digital communication channels, whilst protecting them, your team & your business from fraud & data breaches, and lowering the total cost of processing payments?

PayGuard® has re-engineered the experience of remote payment processing to such an extent, that not only is it possible to process a payment in less than 20 seconds, but staff can cater to complex payment scheduling needs, in most currencies, no matter where they are working so long as they have a browser enabled device with an internet connection, and businesses with repetitive payment requirements can access tools to automate these experiences and remove the need for repeat customer contact altogether.  

In November 2021, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council issued its updated compliance requirements by releasing Version 4.  While organisations taking payment have a window to transition from the prior standard, PayGuard® meets the very latest standard today…right out of the box.  By embracing the new standard with PayGuard®, businesses can efficiently process customer payments, without ever exposing their people, infrastructure, or applications to sensitive payment card information itself, therefore bypassing the need for complex, expensive, disruptive & operationally restrictive IT projects that can take many months, in favour of 30 minutes’ worth of admin.

PayGuard® provides different ways your business can process payments; face to face, over the phone, within digital messaging, online and even in store, enabling you to take advantage of technology built to lower the cost of processing and encourage customers to spend more, while giving you the highest standard of protection from fraud & data breach available.  In addition to this, PayGuard® can initiate payment directly from a customer’s bank account – while in conversation – using our Pay by Bank facility, which can be a much cheaper way to collect money.  As well as settling almost instantly and eliminating the possibility of chargeback, Pay by Bank technology gives business the opportunity to verify customer ID & affordability, remotely during conversation.  

To receive your personalised proposal showing how your business can cut time & cost, as well as regulatory and operational headaches out of taking payments, register for a free 30 minute, no obligation 1-to-1 introduction.  For general PayGuard® information visit www.payguard.co.