Customer experience within your dental clinic can be improved by extending patient care through to the checkout. Collaboration of advanced Payment technology and the oath to do right by your patients is certain to result in a seamless level of service, and consistency of care, in every element of your customer’s experience.

By implementing any one of the following five actionable ideas below, you can yield results in improving customer experiences that will both extend to your clinic’s longevity and your credibility as a merchant:

1. Ingenico terminals: Since October 2015, it has been a legal – yet slow to enforce – necessity for all businesses, including dental clinics, to have the equipment to accept card-present payments with an EMV (EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa) chip. EMV chips are computer chips within credit and debit cards that replace old magnetic stripe technology in order to offer a more secure payment verification service. Use of the EMV chip shifts liability away from Merchants in cases of fraud. With card use on the rise, alongside time-of-service payments, adoption of chip and PIN terminals is strongly encouraged for business and client longevity. The rise of EMV and acceptance of it in your dental clinic results in an added layer of security for your patients.

HIPAA/FIPA compliance encourages this level of protection of patient information, despite its financial basis, as the liability shift now comes with greater consequence for merchants. Financial security is now to be considered within any and all data breaches that compromise patient protection.

Data shows that a customer’s trust is most recognized and required in healthcare than in any other merchant business. Helcim™ can help guide you through merchant systems and PCI compliance to ensure point-to-point encryption of all transactions. An all-in-one processing solution service, adoption of Helcim’s terminal products comes with 24/7 technical support to ease your transition.

Providing a streamlined experience for your customers, higher models of Ingenico’s products also accept contactless payments for the added convenience in customer transactions.

2. Virtual merchants: Strongly recommended for non-accepting EMV merchants, the virtual merchant acts similarly to EMV technology. Processing a transaction through a virtual merchant encrypts the previously vulnerable magnetic stripe. Much like EMV, Virtual Merchants offer real-time authorization, alongside the option to digitize and email receipts and invoices.

Like payment terminals, virtual merchants are now accepting a majority of banking cards. As Helcim’s most popular payment solution, virtual merchants are web-based interfaces with access across popular operating systems and smartphones.

Within its interface, this payment solution has the added benefit of acting as a secure digital ledger. As a result, the virtual merchant can act as a customer credit vault, providing quick access to customers’ billing information and transaction history.

With the convenience of having your patient’s payment on file, payment can be easily accessed and even automated.

Customer security is maintained through virtual merchants through ‘Tokenization’. Tokenization will supplement vulnerable information with other values upon processing transactions. Instead of assigning a vulnerable credit card number to your patients, patients will be assigned secure client IDs that can be accessed for payments within your individual merchant system.

Initial card information is secured in Helcim’s secure servers, allowing only these unique card tokens to be processed to verify new transactions.

3. Smile Savings insurance plans: By accepting this widely used, and cost-effective insurance plan for your clients, your business will become optimized for real-time payments, as well as an elevated customer experience. Usage of this plan excludes the common necessity of patient billing and deductibles. As part of their policy, regular visits to a patient’s dental clinic is encouraged in order to obtain the most value from the plan. Consequently, this affords merchants with the opportunity to offer continuous care and a standard of experience. These real-time payments, noted to come with real-time authorization, can be configured to accept a range of payments that adopt EMV technology. This affords merchants with regulatory receivables and customer longevity, which can be enhanced with the convenience and ease of optimized payment technology.

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