Whether your customers shop in-store or online, they invite you to impress them; to live up to the quality promised by your luxury brand. Do that and you could secure their loyalty for potentially many years to come. This extends to the payment process; when customers pay, it should be seamless, convenient and in-keeping with the luxury retail experience you provide.
What is the ideal luxury retail payment experience?
The quality of your luxury product or service speaks for itself and no doubt all elements of your sales experience reflect and reinforce the premium nature of the brand. The elegant showroom, polished branding, slick website and highly trained sales co-ordinators all contribute to an atmosphere in-keeping with the brand.
That atmosphere, whether online or in-store, must be maintained to the very end. Having generated the perfect ambience for a luxury shopping experience, you don’t want customers to leave with the memory of a clunky, inelegant transaction.
In fact, the actual moment of payment in-store should be as close to invisible as possible. Not at a till; most certainly not involving a queue. Payment should come to the customer and the method should match their preference.
When payment concludes a shopping experience gracefully, your customer can leave feeling content, impressed and valued. They can reflect on their experience positively and look forward to enjoying it again.
How can you achieve the ideal luxury retail payment experience?
The luxury brand payment experience should:
1. Bring the checkout to the customer
In-store or in the showroom, the conversation between the customer and your sales co-ordinator should conclude with a swift, no-fuss payment where the customer is. A mobile point of sale terminal achieves this, taking payment to the customer anywhere in the store, without the delay or disruption of transferring them to the checkout.
2. Offer pay by card and pay by bank
Customers should be able to choose how to pay for their online purchase or settle their account for an order placed in-store or through another channel.
A digital pay-by-link solution that supports both card and open banking (pay by bank) payments is ideal. Pay by bank enables seamless, instant account to account payments. For your business, it reduces costly percentage-based credit card fees and for your customers, it offers a simple, quick payment experience, aligned with your brand, and with immediate notification containing clear reference data.
3. Cater for remote payments and pay by installments
Customers reserving an item, or ordering a customised or bespoke item, by telephone may pay an amount up-front and the remainder on collection. They may also pay in installments.
When doing so, it is less than ideal to take the customer’s credit card details over the phone – this is inconvenient, error-prone and not sufficiently secure. A secure pay-by-link, sent by SMS or email, is a neat, convenient and simple alternative that reduces risk to your business.
Pay-by-link requests can also be scheduled and sent when triggered, for instance by due dates. A series of payment reminders can be triggered the same way.
4. Be secure
Your customers make high-value purchases. They want security built-in and to feel reassured that transactions are secure. You must protect customer data to safeguard your revenue and, ultimately, your brand reputation.
A 3D-secure checkout replaces insecure payment methods for telephone orders whilst delivering a digital, customer-centric experience.
5. Deliver an omnichannel experience
Seamless, secure, digital payments that bring the checkout to the customer, support remote payment options and give customers choice over how to pay help you achieve that sought-after omnichannel experience. That experience will be consistent and aligned with your brand image and identity for each customer interaction.
How a seamless payment experience supports your business goals
Any improvement to the customer experience supports the achievement of your brand’s revenue, loyalty and market penetration objectives. Providing a superior experience gives you a competitive advantage.
Broadening payment options can also support specific marketing strategies. For example, scheduled payment milestones may suit younger buyers who, encouraged by their experience, may go on to be lifelong customers. Brand loyalty is important in luxury retail and the right payment experience can play a considerable role in achieving it.
Convenience and automation in your payment processes also benefits your business by reducing the risk of missed payments, bringing revenue into the business faster and cutting costs by freeing up resources from chasing debt. Omnichannel payments bring your in-store and online payment journeys together, streamline your management information and support advanced analytics into customer preferences and payment behaviours.
How can we help you?
Carat from Fiserv partners with Prommt to give you a pay-by-link solution worthy of your brand. It:
- is an enterprise-grade, multi-location solution suited to large retail operations
- the ability to showcase your brand throughout the payment process
- provides support for integrating payment communications into workflows
- minimises fraud risk through 3D secure transactions and two-factor authentication
- enables feature-rich payment journeys with auto-charge and instant refunds.
Carat from Fiserv partners with Prommt to offer secure, branded pay-by-link solutions to help your business give customers a payment experience worthy of your brand. Contact us to find out how we can help you.
