If you take payments by M-Pesa, a meaningful share of your calls are about them. They follow a small number of patterns, which makes them unusually easy to prepare for.
The four calls
“I have paid but you have not credited me.” The commonest by far. The customer has a confirmation message; your system has not caught up, or the payment went somewhere unexpected.
“I sent it to the wrong number.” Money has gone astray. The customer is anxious and often embarrassed.
“I want a reversal.” Something was paid in error. Expectations about how quickly this happens are usually unrealistic.
“How do I pay?” Simple, frequent, and entirely preventable.
Four patterns. Each needs a different thing from your agent, and all four are shortened enormously by what appears on screen when the phone rings.
What the agent needs on screen
By the time the agent says hello they should see: who is calling, their account, whether a payment is outstanding, and the last few transactions.
Without that, the first ninety seconds of every payment call is the customer reading out a confirmation code while the agent types. With it, the agent can open with “I can see a payment of 2,400 from this morning” — and the temperature of the call drops immediately.
This is the single highest-return configuration decision for any business taking payments. If your call centre system can show the caller’s record as the phone rings, spend the effort connecting it to wherever payments are recorded.
Handling each one
Not credited. Ask for the confirmation code, not the amount — the code is unique and searchable. Check your own records first; most of the time the payment is there and unmatched. Tell them what you can see and what happens next, with a time. If you cannot resolve it on the call, book a callback rather than saying “we will get back to you”, which everybody has learned means nothing.
Wrong number. Be clear and kind about what is and is not within your power. Money sent to a third party is between the customer and their provider. Explain the actual process rather than taking details you cannot act on — false hope here generates three more calls.
Reversal. Set the expectation on the first call. If it takes several working days, say several working days. The second call about a reversal is nearly always caused by a vague answer on the first.
How do I pay. This one should not reach a person at all. See below.
Removing the calls
Three changes that each remove a category.
Send a confirmation message. When a payment is matched, send an SMS. A large share of “have you received it” calls are people who got no acknowledgement and are checking. One message removes the call permanently.
Put payment instructions in the menu. A menu option that reads out the paybill number and the account format answers the “how do I pay” call without a person. Also put it in the hold message, where it reaches people already waiting.
Say when, not whether. Most payment anxiety is about timing. “Payments are credited within ten minutes; if it is longer than an hour, call us” prevents the call at forty minutes.
At month end
For SACCOs, lenders and anyone whose customers are paid monthly, payment calls concentrate brutally in the last and first days of the month.
The three changes above matter most precisely then, because that is when the queue is longest and the shortest path to a smaller queue is fewer calls rather than more agents. There is a separate article on the month-end spike.
One caution
Payment conversations involve financial details and the caller’s identity. Recording them means holding that information, which brings obligations about how long you keep it and who can hear it.
Worth reading the piece on recording and the Data Protection Act before you switch recording on across a payments queue.