A year ago, TSG released an article called ‘Confessions of a SMB During COVID,’ which was part of a series of articles on COVID and the SMB perspective. As I mentioned in the article, I am fortunate to have the perspective of a handful of merchants in various industries.
For the merchants in which I am a partner, payments acceptance is typically an afterthought. This is because they may use more than 25 vendors to run their business. However, I was reminded that when payments acceptance doesn’t work, it is NOT an afterthought. This reminder came through no fault of their own when one of these merchants was unable to take payments for four days this week! It took 10+ phone calls and emails to get it fixed, and it was a simple fix. The merchant acquirer blamed the gateway, who blamed the acquirer, who then blamed the bank, who had no idea what they were talking about and could not resolve the issue. The merchant did not care who was at fault; they just needed to get the problem fixed.
My point of sharing this is a friendly reminder that the basics matter to SMBs. Do SMBs want to use cool new features like geofence marketing? Perhaps. Do they want to be able to pick up the phone when their terminal doesn’t work to get it fixed? Definitely. Don’t forget about the basics.
-Mike
TSG Resources from the Merchant Perspective
- TSG and ETA Release April 2021 U.S. SMB COVID-19 Perspectives
- Confessions of a SMB – Swimtastic Swim School (MCC 7299)
- Confessions of a SMB – Fast Casual Restaurant (MCC 5812)
Mike Strawhecker, President & Partner