If your business accepts credit card payments by phone you are already aware of the time and effort it requires on the part of your staff to answer those phone calls and to manually reconcile your credit card payments with your accounting and other business systems.

A massive data breach recently was discovered at Desjardins, one of the largest federations of credit unions in North America. Information related to names, addresses, birth dates, social insurance numbers, email addresses and information about transaction habits of 2.7 million group members and 173,000 business customers were compromised.

Businesses may have various reasons for analyzing both customer preferences and their effectiveness when it comes to their choice of bill payment channel, but first and foremost they want to know how they can use this information to help them get paid as fast as possible.

Despite the best efforts of businesses to beef up their internet security, hacks, data breaches and cyber-attacks continue to be a serious threat to their customers’ sensitive and confidential information, particularly their credit card data.

What are the implications of this and what does it mean for businesses? Given the rapid growth in the acceptance of this option when it’s offered, it strongly suggests that customers want service providers to adopt communication channels that are convenient to them and make the process of bill paying easier and more fluid.

After a months-long study, Datatel can now demonstrate without a doubt that IVR Payment (Pay-By-Phone) delivers substantial cost reduction to small and medium size businesses that are currently relying on employees to handle calls from customers wishing to pay their bills over the telephone.

In a recent study (focusing on the impact of payment reminders on payments by phone only – not other payment avenues such as web payments), of one large medical practice in particular, during a normal billing cycle, automated voice reminders were delivered to all patients who had incurred charges during the most recent billing period and received their bill in the mail.

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Passed in the U.S. in 1996 it provides data privacy and security provisions for keeping medical information safe.

Health care providers have never been more vulnerable to data breaches and cyber attacks. Healthcare is the second largest industry in the U.S. and is even more vulnerable in the sense that not only is hacker meddling costly in terms of time and money, it can threaten lives as well.

In today’s competitive and interconnected world, companies and organizations really have no choice in terms of offering ever more enhanced forms of customer service if they wish to stay ahead of the game (or just not fall too far behind...) and medical practices are no exception.