Ecommerce merchants must be resilient and strategic to work in a high-risk industry — especially from a payments perspective. You must be vigilant for fraud and chargebacks, and you’ll often experience a longer and more tedious approval process before obtaining new merchant IDs (MIDs).
Many payment processing companies either don’t offer high-risk businesses the features they need or refuse to partner with them altogether. That frustration leads many ecommerce sellers in the space to partner with the first company that will accept their business.
But you don’t have to settle! Manage your business’ finances with the help of a CRM that caters to high-risk accounts. You’ll get a comprehensive solution for securely and effectively processing payments while protecting your MIDs. Better yet, you’ll be able to manage customer interactions and automate many business processes, boosting overall performance.
High-risk payment processors come with terms designed to protect them from the hazards of operating in high-risk industries. Their approach, however, does nothing to help you. Read on to discover why a CRM with high-risk payment processing capabilities is the best option to achieve your business goals.
Breaking bank and credit card issuers’ rules and regulations can lead to harsh consequences, including high processing fees or even losing your merchant ID. High-risk merchants must stay on top of every rule to keep their accounts in good standing.
A good CRM comes with helpful features such as compliance automation tools and strong customer support teams who know your specific needs. You can ask these representatives for assistance configuring your setup or understanding what regulations mean for you.
Fraud can harm you in two significant ways. First, consumers will flag the transactions as fraudulent, and banks and credit card issuers will make a note on your company’s record. Second, you may ship out fraudsters’ purchases before receiving notification of these chargebacks — in which case you’ll also lose the product.
Keep yourself safe with a system designed to fight unauthorized payments. A CRM that’s serious about helping you fight fraud should include:
Fraud protection efforts are especially important for high-risk merchants given their increased likelihood of receiving unauthorized purchases. Don’t leave your reputation up to just one of these methods — find a CRM that offers all of them.
It’s in your best interest to retry failed transactions to prevent churn, but multiple unsuccessful attempts can rack up fees and harm your reputation with banks and credit card issuers. Get a CRM that can help you increase the rate of transaction success.
The following tools decrease churn and protect your MID record:
Merchants who are already facing risk factors like increased fraud rates must stay on top of payment declines to protect their MIDs. Payment processors can’t help you with this problem, but a good CRM can.
High-risk merchants are often in high-churn industries. Optimizing your product offerings and personalizing the consumer experience can keep customers around for longer. But a payment processor alone can’t give you the information you need to do so.
CRMs are built to gather precise data on every action a customer takes and every interaction they have with your brand. Combine this with data from your payment processor to see what’s driving purchases and retention.
Customer Tracking Allows Better Personalization
Nearly 90% of customers value companies that offer personalized experiences, according to a survey by PwC. Use a CRM that tracks customer purchase history and behaviors to make hyper-personalized offers that your customers can’t deny.
Discounts on frequent purchases and loyalty programs that let customers choose their rewards are two of the most valued personalization efforts consumers listed in the PwC survey. Use your data to provide coupon codes, freebies or add-ons that match individual buyer preferences.
Ecommerce businesses with high churn rates must advertise effectively to avoid high acquisition costs. Use the data from your CRM to create customer personas for your biggest spenders and longest-term subscribers. Then, market to other consumers within the same demographics.
Better marketing helps protect high-risk merchants like you in multiple ways. First, an improved customer lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio increases your profitability overall, which makes your business look better to banks. Second, by reaching the people who want what you’re selling, you’ll decrease return rates — another factor that can impact your MID health.
Frustrated customers can quickly become ex-customers unless your customer service representatives have the tools and support to address complaints. A CRM that integrates with high-risk payment processors makes this easy by centralizing customer interactions and purchase history in one place.
Your customer support team will find it easier to understand customers' concerns when they can see that person’s previous support requests and a list of their transactions. Having these details on hand also makes it easier for your support team to craft messages that correctly reference a customer’s history with your company. This type of personalization shows disgruntled buyers that you do care about them and their experiences.
The profit margins in high-risk industries can be tight, especially with all the extra costs associated with high-risk payment processing. A CRM built to work with a company like yours will simplify your operations and free up employees to perform more important tasks.
Without an integrated system, you’ll need to manually import data like transaction history and shipping information from your payment processor to your CRM. Save yourself the stress of manual data entry by linking your payment processor and CRM so both systems can share information.
This capability is especially valuable for those who need to keep customer data and payment histories for compliance reasons. You’ll always be able to find up-to-date information in your CRM.
Set up automated payment workflows in your CRM to free up your time for more challenging transactions and tasks. All you need to do is set up triggers and action steps, and the CRM will handle simple payment tasks like sending out subscription email reminders or retrying failed transactions.
Of course, automation isn’t a good way to handle every payment-related task. You’ll want a person, not a bot, to tackle delicate issues like customer complaints and chargeback requests. Setting up automation will give your team more time to focus on the details of serious problems and ensure they’re handled correctly.
Every chance to protect your company matters when you’re operating in a high-risk industry. Therefore, the CRMs that work best for high-risk merchants include all these features.
sticky.io was designed by a team that understands what high-risk merchants need to succeed. We’ve worked hard for years to build expertise and relationships in high-risk industries. Our CRM integrates with high-risk payment processors like Paysafe and allows merchants to choose from multiple payment gateways.
When you partner with sticky.io, you’ll also get access to a knowledgeable support team. We can answer compliance questions and help you configure your setup to meet your company’s needs. Our main goal is to help sellers like you succeed.
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