There have been several articles in the news lately involving credit card mishaps & billing mistakes.  Capital One billed a woman $286 million dollars, Gameloft (a mobile game developer) double-charged a number of customers and the Minnesota Attorney General is suing Discover for signing people up for credit card protection they didn’t request.

The good news is there are things we can do to ease our customers’ fears when it comes to their credit cards…. and they are pretty simple.

Check-In

If you use Chargify you know we have both an online dashboard and an iPhone app to help you keep track of your company’s key metrics. You can see daily revenue, new signups, total customers and more.

It only takes a minute to look each day and if you suddenly notice a drastic increase/decrease, you can figure out the issue and notify your customers sooner rather than later.

Set Customer Expectations

Let your customers know what they can expect when signing up for your service. The more customers know about the billing process, the less they have to worry about.

• Will your customers receive statements before their credit card is charged?
• Will they receive a receipt after?
• How long after the billing cycle ends will they receive their statement?

With Verizon automatic billing, you receive an email letting you know how much your bill is & when you will be charged. You then receive an email confirming payment and again, letting you know how much it is. It’s helpful & when a surprise happens (say $18,000), you may not be happy but you know immediately and can deal with it.

Good communication = good customer relationships.

Show a Strong Front

Security is a huge concern these days and with good reason.  This year alone we’ve heard about AT&T leaking iPad owner emails, Gawker passwords being stolen and most recently McDonald’s losing emails and birthday info. While none of these resulted in lost credit card data, they are security breaches none the less.

Reminding your customers that their data is secure, is an easy way to assure them you have their best interests (and their protection) in mind.

Post your SSL certificate throughout your site (especially on the checkout page), remind people that you are PCI compliant (if you use Chargify, you are since we only work with PCI compliant gateways) and let people know you take security seriously.

You want your customers to trust you and the more you can do to ease their concerns about their data, the better.

You can start by letting them know they should not expect a $286 million dollar bill.