There are lots of payment processing apps and platforms out there. While Salesforce’s Chargent offers businesses a viable option, it’s not the only option available for CRM-based payments. In fact, CRMDialer’s newest feature that lets businesses collect customer payments from their CRM might just be your new favorite alternative.

For far too long, businesses struggled with slow payments, hidden fees and difficult, clunky implementation. When Salesforce started offering AppFrontier’s Chargent, it gave businesses a better way to handle payment collection with more pros than cons. Many users hail the user support provided and find it easy to implement, which is a definite plus, but there are some downsides too. A few examples of complaints offered up by past users include:

• Having to do substantial configurations to get up and running
• License fees and frequent updates that were difficult to keep up with
• Difficulty in setting up automatic, recurring payments

Maybe you’ve experienced some of those issues for yourself, or maybe you’re wary of using Salesforce because you’ve heard about the high expense, the extensive customization required, the limited deployment options or the extensive training you have to provide your employees before you’ll be up and running.

You’re in luck. Because as great as Salesforce might be for its loyal fans, it’s not going to be the best fitting solution for all businesses. CRMDialer is a worthy Chargent alternative competitor that’s easy to implement, intuitive to use and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes. There’s no hefty annual fee or licensing fees and zero hidden fees. You can collect payments using credit cards, ACH transfers, and e-checks. One-time payments, recurring payments — it’s all at your fingertips.

Having a great payment processing platform and an amazing CRM is too important to trust it to just anyone. With CRMDialer, customization is fast and easy with tightly-coupled functionality, allowing your business to receive all of the powerful features that come with one of the best CRM platforms available.

Importance Of Choosing The Right CRM Platform

When it comes to handling anything in life and in business, having the right tools on your side makes all the difference. For payment processing, the cost is an important factor, but it’s not the only thing you should be looking at. One of the biggest mistakes some businesses make is simply going with the lowest bidder without considering the larger picture. To start envisioning what that could be for you, we’ve rounded up some of the things that the right payment processing platform should deliver, including:

Next Day Funding

Whether it’s for payroll, inventory, paying vendors or other reasons, improving your cash flow via next day funding benefit your entire business. Next-day funding is especially beneficial for merchants with heavy weekend sales volumes. By using a CRMDialer integrated merchant account for processing online customer payments, your business will receive deposits into your bank account the very next business day at no additional cost.

You need faster deposits from your payment processor because it’s your money. CRMDialer’s next day funding merchant account will help to accelerate your deposits coming to you faster and with reporting to match via a sleek dashboard.

Fraud Protection

The best security practices — that’s what you should be looking for in a payment processing platform. And that’s what CRMDialer delivers. Data breaches have been steadily on the rise, with more than 1,500 cases every year. In 2017, more than 14 million credit card numbers and close to 158 million social security numbers were exposed due to data breaches.

To keep information safe and secure, CRMDialer, a Certified PCI Level 1 Service Provider, takes fraud protection very seriously. To keep this credential, they submit to an onsite assessment conducted by one of the Payment Card Industry’s Qualified Security Advisors. They support tokenization, which provides amazing security and keeps sensitive information away from prying eyes. The practice transforms credit card numbers and bank account information into randomly-generated tokens that get stored in the system for ongoing use.

Simply put, the process renders the information useless for anyone or any purpose other than what it was originally intended. That’s fraud protection you can count on!

Seamless Integration

Simplicity. Streamlined operations. That’s what a great CRM payment processing platform offers. If a CRM doesn’t integrate seamlessly with the rest of what you have going on, what’s the use? In the old days, businesses were forced to log out of one system to log into another and back into yet another to record all the pertinent details.

No more. This platform puts simple payment processing right at your fingertips. Best of all? You don’t need to leave your CRM to do it. That means everything gets stored in your CRM, giving you easy access to records and reports without the need for tiresome manual entry. Not only does this eliminate the huge potential for human error, but it also lets you see all the info you need within your power dialer CRM. So you can go from making calls and sending emails to real-time visitor tracking to creating transaction history reports, filtering by date ranges and functions like sales, voids, and refunds for today, the current month, the year, or over the customer’s lifetime.

Flexibility

Processing credit card payments is great, but the right payment processing platform lets you do more. Customers love the convenience of paying by credit card, but they also like being able to pay directly from their bank accounts using ACH transactions or e-checks. In fact, there are roughly 25 billion ACH transactions every year, according to NACHA, the Electronic Payments Association. This number has been growing over the past few years. It’s a popular way to pay for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions. With CRMDialer, you can accept all forms of payment to offer your customers options.

Transparent Pricing

Here’s the golden rule when choosing payment processing platforms: Look for one with transparent pricing policies. Both Salesforce’s Chargent and CRMDialer’s payment collection offer clear pricing with no hidden fees. But here’s where CRMDialer really shines: There’s no annual fee, no licensing fee, and no setup fee. You have clear, manageable costs that won’t leave you feeling like you’re being raked over the coals or taken advantage of.

Salesforce vs. CRMDialer: Payment Processing Pricing

When you’re comparing Chargent to CRMDialer, the biggest difference is the price you’ll pay for the service. While Chargent doesn’t charge transaction fees, they do charge minimum annual billing starting at $1,500 and going up to $6,000+. They offer three account levels, each with a finite number of users. If you go over that number, you get charged an additional $150 per user per year.

CRMDialer doesn’t charge you an annual fee or a per-user fee. Instead, you pay a simple, straightforward amount for your merchant account to accept credit card and e-check payments. You can bring your own merchant account and have no additional fees from CRMDialer. For ACH payments and e-checks, you must use Paya as the processor, which is fully integrated and ready to go with a few clicks with our API integration.

A payment processing CRM that collects payments from customers and is set up quickly allows you to scale up and grow your sales without adding large annual sums to your overhead. The intuitive design was created with your needs in mind, so not only is it cost-effective, it’s also power-packed with the functionality that you absolutely need.

Tips For Choosing Your Payment Processing Platform

Now that you know a little more about what to expect, let’s look at some tips from the experts to help better inform your decision-making process. No matter what platform you ultimately choose, pay attention to the following:

1. Understand the costs: Read the fine print, and do your homework. As we mentioned, when you use Chargent, you pay an annual fee. With CRMDialer, you can expect no additional fees if you bring your own merchant account. Some other companies might also charge licensing and setup fees or demand that your business meet a monthly minimum or even charge you monthly gateway or early termination fees. You never have to worry about those extras with CRMDialer, and that’s the peace of mind you can bank on.
2. Length of time for setup: Depending on the platform you choose, it could take time and resources to set up. Some platforms are complicated to use and require significant training for your employees to get accustomed to the operations. Thankfully, CRMDialer makes it easy to get going quickly without the need for tons of training.
3. Accepted payment types: No matter which type of business you’re running, knowing you’ll be able to accept all major credit cards including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, in addition to accepting ACH transfers and e-checks put your mind at ease. And it allows you to offer the most convenience to your customers, which is always appreciated.
4. How quickly you will receive payment: Have you heard colleagues bemoaning the long waiting period between collecting payments and actually getting paid? When you have the right platform on your side, you can expect to get paid up to three times faster with next day funding, so you don’t have to play the waiting game.
5. Recurring automated payments: CRMDialer gives you so many options. Not only can you accept multiple types of payment, but you can also generate recurring payments to bill clients in a set it and forget it manner. Happy customers are repeat customers, and this gives you one more way to provide the utmost level of service and exceed customer expectations.

What Else Do You Get With CRMDialer?

CRMDialer’s payment processing platform is just another amazing feature that’s part of a power-packed toolkit designed to save you time, increase your business’s efficiency and support your ultimate success. Take a peek here at a few of the features you get along with collecting customer payments:

• Phone System That Replaces Your Need for a Separate Phone: Make calls right from your browser with click-to-call. Use local presence to extend your reach and voicemail drop to save hours a day without losing that personal touch.
• Email and SMS: There’s so much more to today’s business communication than making calls. Emails and text messages are highly effective methods for contacting and following up with customers and prospects. And now you have both included right within your CRM. The email integrates with Google and Outlook, and it lets you create custom templates for the ultimate email campaigns.
• Chat: Internal, B2B — this platform has you covered. For the ultimate in teamwork and collaboration, the chat is tough to beat. Even more importantly, the chat feature includes a searchable database where you can find archived images, files and more for easy access to the information you need when you need it.
• Calendar: The calendar sync with Google and Outlook, giving you fast, easy access to all your important tasks and reminders. Never miss another call or meeting, and never worry about having to log out of your CRM and into your calendar. You’ve got it all right there.
• Helpdesk: Catering to your clientele is everything. With the built-in helpdesk, you can monitor any customer issues with a ticketing system that lets you start tracking from the moment tickets are received until the moment they’re resolved. Keep an eye on your customer service department’s efficiency from anywhere and on any device.

You get so much with CRMDialer. Game-changing features (hello, real-time visitor tracking), fabulous service and simple setup and integration await. This white label platform also gives you the option to completely customize your platform for a branded view without requiring the use of a developer.

And that’s only the beginning. Sign up today to see for yourself exactly why CRMDialer is such a worthy Chargent alternative.