Q&A with TCN: on Streamlining Payment Processing in Contact Centers

Organizations seeking new approaches and solutions to grow their businesses and enhance employee experiences while cutting costs and delivering value to their customers should engage in collaborative-oriented partnerships with leading enterprises. Through strategic partnership integration, businesses can strengthen their organization by helping each other resolve issues that have arisen or may arise in the workplace as well as opening new opportunities for business growth.

Just recently, TCN, Inc., a leading provider of comprehensive cloud contact center solutions, partnered with premier payment problem solver BillingTree to enhance payment offerings for enterprises and contact centers worldwide.

VoipReview spoke with Mckay Bird, the Chief Marketing Officer at TCN, Inc., to discuss their recent partnership integration with BillingTree. Bird also shares TCN’s future roadmaps and offers additional insights on the trends reshaping the contact center industry.  

Q: TCN recently announced a strategic partnership integration with BillingTree. What prompted you to choose BillingTree as your payment processing solutions partner over other providers on the market today?

A: TCN chose BillingTree for their market expertise in payment processing, not to mention their deep understanding of client experience when it comes to Interactive Voice Response (IVR) payments and how it has transformed over time.

Q: How will your latest partnership with BillingTree impact TCN customers?

A: BillingTree’s integration to TCN’s IVR and TCN cloud contact center platform provides TCN customers with access to BillingTree’s IVR payment gateway as another effective, secure, and streamlined option to collect and receive payments in full and on time. Additionally, through TCN’s omnichannel texting feature, AgentSMS, contact center agents can send customers' payment reminders with direct links to facilitate payments, connecting them directly with BillingTree Payrazr mobile payment solutions.

Q: In what ways can your partnership with BillingTree enhance agent engagement and customer experience as well as streamline payment offerings in contact centers? Can you offer some sample use cases?

A: Payment processors, such as BillingTree, enable time and cost savings for both the consumer and the agent involved with the transaction. And for agentless IVR payment transactions, the time savings is even greater. It also removes compliance barriers for contact centers worried about who has access to credit card information. For example, as a patient to a clinic, an individual can opt to pay a bill by calling an 800 number, or an individual can pay past due balances for a cable subscription without talking to an agent.

Q: Tell us a bit more about TCN Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution. What are its core features and capabilities?

A: TCN Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has the following features

• Equipped with skill-based routing;
• Fast and easy build  for on-the-fly changes, no programming required;
• Offers “hold queues” for customers, enabling them to save their place in line and be called back when it’s their turn to speak to an agent; and
• TCN’s speech IVR capabilities are powered by Google.

Q: Where do you see the contact center industry going in the future? What emerging technologies or trends do you think will affect and shape the industry, and how is TCN addressing these?

A: 2019contact center trends will all boil down to the customer experience (CX) and how brands can improve their customer service and overall experience. Chatbots and other AI-oriented platforms will become more intelligent (i.e. Google Duplex), opening the possibility of computer-to-computer communication to enable companies to better predict and proactively meet consumers’ needs. The mass amount of consumer data collected will be used to push better experiences and easier interactions. Looking ahead, consumers will increasingly demand more personalization and interactivity within the contact center industry.

As customers become increasingly accustomed to the efficiency, empowerment, and interactivity offered by technology, companies are expected to continually improve, evolve, and develop. TCN has a longstanding tradition of recognizing problems in the market, developing solutions, and delivering those solutions before the client even realized the need. Over the past five years, TCN has released a range of robust and innovative services and solutions, including Integrated Business Intelligence Engine, Queue Callback, Speech Analytics, Ringless Voicemail, and Hold Queue Monitoring, to name a few.

Q: What’s next for TCN? Are there other new products or solutions you’re brewing up?

A: TCN has several new features and enhancements coming to market in 2019, as well as a few new features clients are currently using in beta. In addition to enhancing agent experience and improving SMS functionality, TCN is looking to add AgentChat features as well as integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM to its existing platform, to name just a few.

About TCN
TCN is a leading provider of cloud contact center technology for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs, and collection agencies worldwide. Founded in 1999, TCN combines a deep understanding of the needs of call center users with a highly affordable delivery model, ensuring immediate access to robust call center technology, such as predictive dialer, IVR, call recording, and business analytics required to optimize operations and adhere to TCPA regulations. Its “always-on” cloud-based delivery model provides customers with immediate access to the latest version of the TCN solution, as well as the ability to quickly and easily scale and adjust to evolving business needs. TCN serves various Fortune 500 companies and enterprises in multiple industries including newspaper, collection, education, healthcare, automotive, political, customer service, and marketing.