As the telecoms market has changed and evolved Northumberland based reseller Dial Green has become increasingly conscious of the necessity to focus on a capability that provides real differentiation in a competitive marketplace. By working to understand the challenges of its customer base Dial Green identified an opportunity to make PCI compliance in call centre environments easier and more cost effective. PCI or the Payment Card Industry is the regulator for card payments security. Compliance is an essential part of any business that takes card payments and can prove particularly onerous in larger organisations.
As Dial Green captured more opportunities in this space they considered the advantage both to them and their customers of owning the end to end card process of card payments, from the voice minute of the consumer calling to make a payment, to the phone system and line that the call is delivered on, to the PCI compliance applications that make card security easier right the way through to the processing of the card transaction and analytics that make each aspect of that easier for their customers to manage their business.
Working with NetPay
Dial Green contacted NetPay to discuss the opportunity of providing card processing and merchant services to their customers, Neil Greer Account Director of Dial Green commented, “We had identified the potential opportunity of providing merchant services to our customers - both those where we had PCI solutions in place as well as for our other standard telecoms customers. It is fair to say that whilst we had identified the opportunity we still needed the support and detail to ensure it was a credible, margin enhancing service for us. We looked at the market and the potential partners for these services and found a unique proposition with NetPay who provide wholesale merchant services and have a deep understanding of the telecoms channel; we spoke through our thoughts with them and were genuinely impressed with their capability, their absolute commitment to support us in our venture into payment services and turn our ideas into margin.”
Support the Opportunity
After getting in touch, NetPay took Dial Green through the capability of its wholesale card payments and merchant services proposition and the potential commercial opportunity within its customer base. NetPay arranged a two-day training and accreditation course with the team at Dial Green to take them through the services, educate them on the competitors and give them the tools they needed to identify, win and grow new opportunities.
Neil Greer Account Director of Dial Green stated, “The training we received from NetPay was fantastic, the team were all new to merchant services but came out fired up and ready to win business. The training really hammered home the opportunity for us. We spent a lot of time talking about where we could see opportunities within our customer base and getting to grips with the competition and the genuine unique selling points of NetPay.”
Carl Churchill, Managing Director of NetPay commented, “Training is absolutely central to us bringing on board a new partner. The majority of those that express an interest in selling NetPay services either on an indirect or wholesale basis have not had a background in card processing but have some very clear opportunities to develop. The training takes card payment novices and allows them to emerge with some really comprehensive knowledge but more importantly puts them in a position to win business and make money.”
Achieving Success
Within the first few days following training Dial Green had won its first merchant services customer from the snatches of High Street and acquiring banks. Following that Dial Green has seen considerable success both within its existing customer base and with new opportunities.
Andrew Fox Business Development Director of Dial Green commented, “One thing that has surprised us is quite how open businesses are to talk about merchant services, we are actually opening more doors for these services with new customers that we have perhaps done with our core telecoms business of late. As a result it’s actually also improved the success of our telecoms sales as once we have talked through the merchant services capability and developed a relationship with the customer they are more open to discuss things that maybe if we had approached them to speak about solely they probably wouldn’t have been interested in. We are now developing deals for online payments having had success with terminal sales; we are excited about the future and have good reason to be having recently been awarded a 13 site deal for a totally new customer that will develop into a customer for the rest of our portfolio!
‘New opportunities, retention of existing customers together with real margin and excellent support, ticks all the boxes’’
Carl Churchill, Managing Director of NetPay said, “We are delighted with Dial Green’s progress; they have embraced the capability and really focused on making it successful. As a result they have demonstrated the considerable opportunity for telecoms businesses to sell merchant services into their customer base. It’s a great product and a great retention tactic as part of a broader multi-product play, something that is essential to ensure continued success in the telecoms space”