Years of working with businesses and personal customers has taught us a couple of useful things. We pride ourselves on being able to personalise a rather niche service, and yet, we know that an individual at the end of the telephone is not always appealing to some customers.
So, when we detect that our involvement, our personal involvement, is more of a turn off than a lure, our brokers take a step back.
So confident are we in the ease and sophistication of the tools we provide, we can extract ourselves from the operation of sending a payment.
We will always ensure that a customer can pick up the telephone if needed and our 'View Only' service wrapper ensures that even if you do not want to talk directly with us we can see where improvements could be made and oversee you payments activities from afar.
Humility in this regard - essentially the acceptance that human intervention can be a turn off for some clients - is essential when dealing in a service focussed sector live payments and currency exchange.
Here is an example of what we mean:
An accountant with whom we work might not want to introduce or include our brokers in their recommendation to an SME that exchange currencies when paying suppliers.
We will explain and demonstrate our online platform to our accountancy partner and then, with their consent and on their instruction, we will simply sit back and facilitate the engagement of our services but without the direct advocacy of a voice broking overlay.
Our accountancy partner can then happily and without impediment, subtly introduce their client to our platform. They do not need to introduce their client to our broker.
This is an interesting and perhaps new way of bringing tailored currency services to SMEs.
It removes concerns our partners might have about the part personality and the personal connection their client might form with us.
So simple is our system that the accountant can answer questions if needs be. We can always be on speed dial, but, this approach allows the technology we use to do the talking.
It is a way of avoiding pressure selling.
The client engages with an intuitive process, rather than with an overly chatty sales person.
Like any business we want to talk directly to our clients. For one thing, initially, it helps us assess how suitable a resource we are for the client, plus it helps us feel confident in the quality of the service, but, many businesses just want the tech.
Someone in the finance team of a referred client might not give two hoots about the personality we can bring to the matter. Personality and insight may not be in the least bit important to the individual settling an invoice; they want, ease, speed and function.
We are totally confident that someone can, may be only with measured guidance initially, pick up how to execute a transaction. They can be left to their own devices without what some might deem interference from our front end broking staff.
An extrapolation of this premise is to suggest that certain businesses can use us to compliment the other platform based services they provide.
An accountant may already recommend Quick Books or Sage. They could now recommend Prime Cap as a payment platform.
The expertise of a broker will always be there and we will always act to make sure that errors or oversight is mitigated, but, intuitive clients do not need to rely on us to conduct their own payments, settlements and transactions.
We have discussed the differences between Prime Cap and other purely online transfer platforms in other posts . - see 'related posts' to the right for more on this.
In a nut shell we feel that because we can compete on a like for like basis on price|rate and because our platform can outperform the functionality of many of the more main stream transfer systems online, we have the edge. Other solutions platforms, like your bank (with the international payment section of their online banking), will not notify you of favourable conditions for your exchange.
Transferwise (as one example) will not call you to inform you that the rate you were looking at yesterday has now improved and consequently reduced the amount you thought you might have to pay.
We won't tell you to wait because we think the rate will improve, but we can inform you of such an improvement and we can give you the benefit of our experience when it comes to advising on simple and free ways to remove the risk of the rate going against you.
DIY currency transfer systems will not detail the benefits of using something like a forward contract.
They will not inform you that you have missed the cut off for today's payment clearing abroad. You have to login in to see whether your money has arrived.
They will not clarify the effect currency controls and less developed banking infrastructure might have on your ability to send and receive money to and from certain countries.
Using and providing cutting edge and yet familiar online systems, ones that look and feel and work the same as online banking systems you might already use, does not mean you lose any of the advantages of having an expert at the end of the telephone.
Having said that, if you are recommending someone revise the way they make payments with a view to improving efficiency and lowering costs, Prime Cap does not mean you're risking your client falling out with a salesman.
Laissez-faire or directly managed, our suite of tools are there for everyone. We already know there is an appetite for this blended approach, but we are also in the market to cater for those who want both more and less personalisation of these activities.
If you would like to discuss this further, get some real examples of the many different ways we work with a variety of businesses and individuals, or simply want to try the system for yourself, then we invite you to get in touch.