Use these key questions to evaluate your payments process and identify opportunities you can open up by updating your solution.
In the world of live events, you’re processing hundreds of transactions a day. It’s not just the tickets you’re selling but also donations, membership renewals, merchandise, snacks, add-ons, and more.
Yet, it’s all too easy to wait until you have payment processing problems to pay attention to your service.
It’s time to get strategic and proactive. The right event payment processing solution won’t just help you avoid issues – it should make your team’s lives easier and enable your organization to build revenue.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customer for a moment. You’ve received a beautiful marketing email about an exciting show. You click on the offer. You pick the perfect seats. You go to checkout and then, when it comes time to pay, something goes wrong so your transaction won't complete.
Now, instead of asking yourself “Do I want to go see this show?” You’re asking yourself, “Is this show worth the hassle of figuring this mess out?” Naturally, for many people, the answer is going to be a “no.”
The more friction you have in your payments process, the more opportunities there are for customers to change their mind.
Think about choosing the right payment provider as an investment in your conversions. The smoother your checkouts go and the more authorizations your payment processor completes, the more revenue is flowing into your organization.
Unexpected “junk fees” from your payments solution add up fast.
Really take a look at the billing from your payments solution. Is the fee structure complicated, obscure, or downright sneaky? Are junk fees costing you significant chunks of money you haven’t accounted for?
Be wary of extra charges for:
Transparency, consistency, and simplicity make a difference for your bottom line.
“Can you take Apple Pay?” If you find yourself saying “no” to that question again and again, it might be time to turn that answer into a “yes.” Modern customers are coming to expect Apple Pay and Google Pay to be available everywhere they go.
And there’s more. Let’s go back to that first example. You’re jazzed about a new show, you’ve selected your seats, you go to checkout and… oh, you need to enter credit card information. So, now you have to go find your credit card, which is in your wallet, which is in your bag, which is on the coat rack – and maybe you’re in the other room or perhaps you even left home with just your phone. So, you tell yourself you’ll do it later – but will you?
There’s that friction again.
That’s one reason why mobile payment methods are such a game-changer for audience members and organizations alike. When paying online, all you have to do is select “Apple Pay” or “Google Pay” as your payment method and the payment is authorized in seconds – no need to memorize or find card information. Or, if paying in person, all it takes is a quick phone tap on the payment terminal and you’re good to go.
We’ll say it again: quick, easy payments mean happy customers and happy sales figures.
We’ve talked to many organizations who want to start a membership program, but are worried about the burden that keeping up with renewals would place on their team.
Here’s some good news: modern payment solutions can now offer the ability to automatically update stored card details as they change.
So, if you have a member whose credit card has changed – whether it’s gotten lost or simply expired – your payment processing system makes the change, with no work needed from your team or your customers. When it’s time for their membership to renew, it will do so automatically, without a hitch.
Now that membership program you’ve been dreaming of is so much more achievable.
Even better, with the whole process running automatically, you’ll reduce involuntary churn and see an increase in member retention – along with the dependable revenue that comes with it.
Nobody wants to go back and forth with a thousand different representatives, trying to figure out who exactly can help with an issue. When it’s an issue with a payment, you’re especially feeling the heat to resolve it.
You need to know who to call at any point in the process, as a baseline. But, what if you only had to make one call, no matter what the issue was? Plus, go a step further and imagine a world in which you have a strong, reliable, pre-existing relationship with the company on the other end, so that you can truly feel taken care of.
TLDR: You don’t have to put up with bad customer service from your payment processing provider.
We hear about headaches with sourcing and setting up payment terminals all the time. Any of these sound familiar?
Better than aspirin, consider what a difference it would make if your payments provider also provided tried-and-true hardware, ready to go right out of the box.
Whenever possible, your team should be in the driver’s seat when it comes to making critical decisions about your customer experience.
So, let’s talk about refund windows. Many payment processing providers put strict limitations on when refunds are available, dictating limits that are often extremely short. While that may work for some organizations, it doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. Live events (unlike, say, online shopping, where you might order something and receive it within a few days) often have long timeframes between when a ticket is booked online and the actual show. There are many good reasons why a refund may need to be issued during that time period or why an organization might want to offer flexibility.
Shouldn’t you get to decide what refund window is best for your customers and for your payments process?
Not to mention, there are a myriad of strategic decisions your team can make in order to craft a smooth, cohesive audience experience. It could be choosing the receipt printing settings to meet the needs of your box office operations, and it could be customizing your hardware to match the look and feel of your organization’s brand. Imagine your logo right there on the screen!
Look for a payment processing provider that opens doors for you and makes options available.
It should be. That’s why we’ve created Spektrix Payments as part of our complete marketing, ticketing, and fundraising solution. Talk to our team to explore the value we could bring to your organization’s payments process, as part of our market solution for ticketing and customer relationship management in the live events sector.
Lauren Watson (she/they) is a Client Success Lead at Spektrix.