94% of sales professionals agree that they’re able to close more deals and generate more revenue through the use of different software and tools.
The right sales tools help your sales team keep customer data on hand so you can pull it up whenever you need to make a decision based on hard facts or whenever a customer’s details need to be modified or checked.
However, there’s something that can’t be ignored in the sales process. It’s essential to understand how safe the tools are that sales professionals use.
After all, protecting your sales data (which includes your customer’s sensitive data) from cybercriminals is essential to continue operating your business successfully. We can’t ignore this alarming fact: 60% of companies that face cyberattacks go out of business.
In a nutshell, you need to work with safe tools to boost your bottom line and protect your money from fraudsters.
In this article, we'll list the best tools to protect your hard-earned revenue, keep your customer’s data safe, and continue to run your business smoothly and successfully. Read on.
As a business, you need to market your offerings on multiple channels, and your customers expect you to be there everywhere at all times. When they have a question, they want an answer quickly.
Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Line, Instagram—it's impossible to stay on top of it all. If you do, you lose critical information jumping from one platform to another, even the sale itself.
How do you track your return on your advertising spending when using multiple tools, complicated spreadsheets, and third-party applications?
The right CRM software will help you combine all these services into a single dashboard, where you or your team can instantly respond, no matter what channel your customer prefers to use.
If your customer contacts you through multiple channels, CRM software will help you merge all their messages into one easy-to-manage chat. That helps you close more deals, rather than searching for a lost email or a message and, as a result, losing the sale.
When making marketing or advertising decisions, they'll be based on real-time revenue reporting and sales pipeline data, not just your gut feeling.
You'll see the actual dollar revenue of your deals that started on Facebook, moved to live chat, and finished on email, not that you just had 30 leads for the month.
What makes CRM software so good - namely, that it can manage detailed customer data - is also what makes it a prime target for cyberattacks. As mentioned before, you can't afford a data breach in your company—it'll shatter the brand image that took you so much effort to build.
If you have an on-premise CRM system instead of a cloud-based one, you must secure the IT infrastructure hosting your CRM data.
Create multiple layers of protection for the devices you and your team use to access customer data, including mobile phones, laptops, etc., to make it as hard as possible for hackers to breach your database.
Here's how you can ensure that:
Every online business needs a compliant and secure payment gateway to avoid getting caught in a sticky situation when fraud happens.
If fraudsters attack, your business might face chargebacks, which means you have to pay back the customers whose accounts were used for those dodgy transactions.
Data security is an absolute must for merchants, and it all starts with having a rock-solid payment gateway.
Here are some tools you need to use and the rules your payment gateway should follow to ensure that all parties involved in the whole sales process stay safe and secure:
Simply put, data encryption is like putting a secret code on the information customers enter. When that data gets sent through the payment processor, the acquiring bank will unlock the details with its unique key (OTPs or other authorization methods).
This makes it super hard for any scammers to nick payment information, so the chances of payment fraud go way down.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS, lays down the laws and standards for card payments. If you're a business accepting card payments, you and your payment gateway company need to toe the line and stick to these standards.
Some common PCI DSS measures you need to follow include:
Tokenization converts sensitive card details into a unique security token using hashing, encryption, token, and security keys.
This way, you can still use the token for future payments without storing the actual card details.
SET is a nifty digital protocol and framework created by Mastercard and VISA to keep your customers' credit card payment details safe and sound. The protocol requires payment gateways to hide users' sensitive card details to stop any unauthorized access.
So you don't have to worry about protecting something that you can't even see or access but are allowed to verify to shield your business against fraud.
3D Secure 2.0 is an authentication protocol by EMVCo that helps establish whether the person using the card is the cardholder themselves.
When your customer uses their card details and confirms the payment, they'll get an extra step where they enter 3D secure PINs or passwords to verify with their banks.
Supported by all browsers, SSL guarantees the highest level of security when transmitting data between your valued customers' web browsers and the payment service provider.
Your website needs to have SSL security technology for every payment that goes through it.
But even if your website doesn't have SSL installed, the right payment gateways will have a secure link to keep that information safe and sound.
AI algorithms can achieve up to 96% accuracy in detecting fraud for eCommerce businesses.
Online fraud detection and prevention rely on machine learning, which involves utilizing AI algorithms trained on historical data to create risk rules.
Use these rules to either block or allow specific user actions, like spotting suspicious logins, identity theft, or fraudulent transactions.
When training the machine learning engine, you'll need to mark previous fraud and non-fraud cases to avoid false alarms and make those risk rules more precise. The longer the algorithms run, the better suggestions they'll churn out.
Machines have it easy when it comes to handling big datasets compared to humans. This means:
And here's the kicker—using machine learning is cost-effective! You don't need to hire a lot of RiskOps agents. You only need one machine-learning system to handle all your data, no matter how much there is.
It's great for businesses with ups and downs in traffic, checkouts, or signups. So, you can scale up your company without blowing your budget on risk management.
Algorithms don't need a break, a holiday, or a snooze. Fraud attacks can hit anytime, 24/7. But even the sharpest fraud managers might walk in on Monday morning with a stack of manual reviews waiting for them.
On the other hand, machine learning can sift through the obvious frauds and the legit ones in real time. They're always on, working non-stop, and never get tired, giving your fraud management a solid helping hand.
The financial security of your customers and protecting the whole sales process should be the highest priority of your business.
Using the tools and tips mentioned in this article, ensure that your brand's reputation stays intact and you don't suffer financial losses due to a cyberattack.
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Date: Dec 12, 2023 Author: Bijina Pokhrel
