How Much is it Costing You to Process Payments Manually Over the Phone?

After a months-long study, Datatel can now demonstrate without a doubt that IVR Payment (Pay-By-Phone) delivers substantial cost reduction to small and medium size businesses that are currently relying on employees to handle calls from customers wishing to pay their bills over the telephone.

The study revealed that many merchants simply don’t know with any degree of accuracy how much it’s really costing them each time one of their staff picks up a customer phone call and processes a bill payment.

The numbers tell the story. Merchants who reported employee salary of $30,000/ year incur the following costs:

• A merchant processing as few as 75 payments over the phone per month spends $1,542.86 / year in staffing costs
• A merchant processing as few as 175 payments over the phone per month spends $3,600.00 / year in staffing costs
• And a merchant processing 500 payments per month over the phone spends $10,285.71 / year in staffing costs

Simply implementing automated processes to handle the same level of payments by phone resulted in the following cost efficiencies:

• Merchants processing as few as 75 payments can experience 46% cost reduction - the equivalent of $714.86 / year in cost savings
• Merchants processing 175 payments can experience 67%c ost reduction - the equivalent of $2,412.00 / year in cost savings
• Merchants processing 500 payments can experience 71% cost reduction - the equivalent of $7,285.71 / year in cost savings.

Actual cost reductions may differ from merchant to merchant depending on the salaries that they pay and how they implement automation. The main point to take away from this is that automation = cost reductions. An automated system can accept payments 24/7, as opposed to just during normal working hours, and doesn’t require breaks or vacations.

The intelligence that we have compiled and are sharing here should go a long way towards helping merchants make better informed staffing decisions so as to enable them to run their business in a more cost effective manner, not only in terms of labor costs but also in improving invoice to cash time by giving their customers the convenience of paying bills over the phone 24/7 instead of only during actual hours of operation. 

To find out more contact us today.

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