The COVID-19 Pandemic has drastically impacted the functioning of businesses and organizations across the board. Business leaders have been forced to recalibrate their entire operations and quickly activate business continuity plans, make staff reductions and/or reallocations and implement work-at-home policies where viable. The ability of businesses to respond promptly to their customers phone inquiries, prioritize payment calls and maintain PCI compliance and data security as staff works from home has been potentially compromised by the need for on-the-fly re-architecture of business and security processes needed to respond to rapidly changing developments. For those businesses seeking a solution to what might very well end up becoming a long-term issue, IVR Payments can be a vital Payment Acceptance solution for helping businesses and organizations relieve the stress caused by the need for significant staff reductions while enabling them to continue processing customers payments without compromising customer service and PCI compliance.

IVR Payments (Interactive Voice Response) is a technology that allows customers to make a variety of different types of payments over the telephone by interacting with an automated system, as opposed to having to provide their credit card information to a live agent. Because it is fully automated, an IVR Payment solution can operate 24/7 as opposed to being limited to a business’s normal hours of operation (normal being an ever-evolving concept in these uncertain times). And for those businesses that for various reasons still require the involvement of an agent/staff member in the process it can be deployed in such a way as to allow agents/staff can speak to customers and then transfer the call seamlessly when it’s time to collect and process the callers credit card.

How you can quickly implement an IVR Payment Solution and the Different Types of IVR Payment Solutions

1. Customer Self-Service – IVR Payment Solutions:

With Customer Self-Service IVR Payments your customers call into your Company’s existing phone number and select Payments from your front end phone menu (e.g. To Make A Payment Now, Press 1.. You can set it as 1, 2 or 3 which ever works best for your organization). Your phone system will transfer the call to your DatatelPay-By-Phone line, which is branded and configured to your specifications. Your customers can make a payment using their Credit Card, in a PCI Compliant environment with transactions being processed in real-time to your credit card processor. Depending on the options you choose this can interact with your business systems in multiple ways.

2. Agent Assisted – IVR Payment Solutions

While your staff member/ customer service agent is speaking with a customer, s/he can transfer your customers to the DatatelPay-By-Phone when it comes time to collect the customer’s payment information. Your agent can then exit the call, thereby ensuring that s/he is not privy to your client’s Credit Card Information, leaving your customers confident that their information is safe and secure and you can rest easy, safe in the knowledge that your payment processes are PCI Compliant.

IVR Payment Solutions can help you manage call payment activity efficiently and securely. Among its many advantages are:

• Your customers can securely make phone payments 24/7 outside your regular business hours
• Reduces stress on your staff and make operations more efficient and responsive by not having to devote time to handling payment-related calls. This can also work with customer service agents who can be re-deployed to work from home.
• Comply with industry security requirements (PCI and HIPAA) and keep you in scope while you re-deploy your workforce
• You can handle many concurrent calls without ever missing a payment
• Transactions flow directly into your existing merchant account without having to make any changes
• Can be deployed in a matter of days. Depending on the complexity of the deployments, implementation times can take as little as 5 to 12 business days.

We are hopeful that with the efforts of medical experts and scientists globally, the current COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that it has on all of our lives will begin to subside. Businesses and organizations that are burdened with coping with all of the implications need to make sure that they are not just making decisions that help them navigate the here and now, but that will also serve them well when eventually things will begin to return to normal (or whatever the new normal ends up being).

In turbulent times like the ones we are experiencing when the situation changes throughout the day and reaction time is of the essence, businesses can’t afford to get locked into a process that is long and drawn out. Our experienced and dedicated team of IVR Payment Solutions specialists can have your IVR Payments Solution up and running in a matter of days(as opposed to weeks or months) with no need for any hardware or software for you to buy or install. Contact us, we are here to help.