New Study Reveals How Much is Costing Businesses to Process Payments Manually Over the Phone

MIAMI, March 5, 2019 (Newswire.com) - Datatel Communications Inc., a leader in IVR Payments/Pay-By-Phone, spent months compiling and analyzing data with the intent of quantifying how much it costs small and medium-size businesses to process bill payments over the phone using a live staff.

“To meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses Datatel has looked at what they are currently spending across multiple salary bands and providing easy to understand metrics that can help businesses make informed decisions on how to implement automation to achieve cost savings,” according to Datatel Co-CEO, Barnard Crespi.

Datatel Pay-By-Phone xPress is an exciting solution for small and medium-size business that employs IVR Payment technology to help them apply automation to payments by phone removing live agents from handling any payment calls helping them realize significant cost savings.

Barnard Crespi , Co-CEO

The focus of the study was small and medium-sized businesses using three different levels of payment activity - businesses who handle- 75, 175 and 500 calls per month from customers to make a payment.

The study also accounted for the variance in salaries paid to employees who typically process payments by phone across multiple industries. Training time, vacation time and breaks were also taken into account, as well as staff utilization levels (the amount of work time that employees spend working).

The study’s findings should be of considerable interest to small and medium-sized businesses that use live staff to accept over the phone payments and who are looking for ways to reduce costs and improve overall efficiency.

The results of the study revealed that many businesses simply don’t know with any degree of accuracy how much it really costs them each time one of their staff answers a customer phone call to process a bill payment.

Summarized below are the savings based on a salary of $30,000/year, however, Datatel also compiled more detailed results for a number of different salary ranges:

• Business processing 75 payment calls per month using live staff: $714.86/year in labor cost savings
• Business processing 175 payment calls per month using live staff: $2,412.00/year in labor cost savings 
• Business processing 500 payment calls per month using live staff: $7,285.71/year in labor cost savings

Companies can use the study results to calculate costs that are applicable to their business or obtain a free report from Datatel by providing a few pieces of non-confidential information.

Some of the cost-saving highlights of implementing automation

• The study shows that automation can save businesses anywhere from 46% to as much as 71% of direct labor costs when implementing automation to perform the same functions
• Merchants processing 175 payments can experience a 67% cost reduction - the equivalent of $2,412.00/year in cost savings
• Merchants processing 500 payments can experience upwards of 71% in cost reductions – the equivalent of the equivalent of $7,285.71/year in cost savings

"Datatel Pay-By-Phone xPress is an exciting solution for small and medium-size business that employs IVR Payment technology to help them apply automation to payments by phone removing live agents from handling any payment calls helping them realize significant cost savings," Co-CEO Barnard Crespi added.

About Datatel

Datatel delivers innovative software and voice communication solutions to help our clients become more agile, profitable, and successful.  

Datatel’s Pay-By-Phone/IVR Payments SaaS Platform provides businesses with the most robust and cost-effective way to securely and easily process credit card payments 24/7 over the phone, in a PCI Compliant environment.

Datatel has been providing IVR Payment Solutions on the cloud to hundreds of businesses, healthcare providers, governments, and non-profit organizations for over ten years.

Datatel’s success comes from investing in its people, clients, and technology. With a focus on innovation, Datatel has arrived at a service delivery model that guarantees its customers satisfaction.

Source: Datatel Communications Inc