Game On…

This year our company resolution is to take the pressure out of getting set up online and to really champion those start-up businesses. So we recently announced an overhaul of our Merchant Services package for new e-tailers.

From speaking to hundreds of new businesses every month, we’re all too aware of the high set-up costs and lengthy approval processes which can make acquiring a merchant account, one of the most painful parts of setting up an online business.

David and Ben, co-founders of Pucket

We found in our 2011 e-business benchmark report, that the average time for a merchant account set up through external providers is seven weeks with one-in-ten internet business owners saying they pay over £500 in initial set-up costs.  And we think that’s too much!

The new and improved offering from Sage Pay and leading merchant account supplier Elavon, aims to provide merchant accounts in an average of four weeks, with no set-up costs, no monthly fees and no long-term contracts.  We now have thousands of business using our Merchant Services package and Pucket Enterprises is just one of them.

Pucket Enterprises is a company created by David Harvey and Ben Lewis.  After seeing two old men playing the traditional game Passe Trappe in a southern French town, David and Ben headed straight to a local DIY shop to buy the materials to make their own updated version of the game.  Pucket was born.  Several years and many, many games of Pucket later, the two-man-team decided that it was just too good to keep to themselves- they had to bring the game to the UK- and were inspired to start up their own online business.

Sage Pay modelling the Pucket Board

The Pucket game involves catapulting wooden ‘pucks’ across a handcrafted wooden board and on to your competitor’s side through a small hole. Any ‘pucks’ that arrive on your side must be sent back before you win.  Right, got it?

No longer making the games by hand, Pucket’s founders sourced skilled woodworking craftsmen based in India to handcraft the games out of Sheesham or Haldu wood and as part of their working ethos, they are proud to support Indian Handicrafts and ensure their workers receive a fair wage.

Originally using just PayPal to accept payments on their site, David and Ben struggled with the amount of queries that it raised.  “When we used PayPal to handle payments, my personal phone number was on the website, and I would receive countless calls from people who had forgotten their PayPal password, or couldn’t change the delivery address, etc.” says David.

Deciding to move their gateway to Sage Pay, The Pucket team chose to take advantage of Sage Pay’s Merchant Services package too.  Although taking them awhile to build and test the checkout functionality on their website, Pucket Enterprises are really happy with the solution.  David told us “The business has grown more than we dared hope. Most of our business is direct-to-consumer, through our website. Sage Pay was recommended to us by our web developers as being good to work with, and they worked out significantly cheaper than PayPal. They were very helpful at getting things transferred smoothly, and now we can take payments by phone too.’

Pucket Enterprises have stuck to selling just their core product-the game of Pucket- but it’s now sold in Selfridges and the Conran Shop, as well as two dozen independent shops.

We’re all huge fans here at Sage Pay HQ and can often be found holding Pucket competitions during our lunch hours!

We’re proud to announce Pucket as our February Business of the Month for their entrepreneurial spirit by having a vision and taking a chance, which is well and truly paying off!

For further information on Sage Pay’s Merchant Service package, please visit: http://www.sagepay.com/merchant-services

Are you experienced….Part 2

I thought I’d follow up Simon’s blog about customer experience to let you know how we’re putting these ideas into practice.  Afterall, it’s all very well to talk about these things, but are we putting our money where our mouth is?

We’ve been looking at our current levels of support (which many of you already tell us is very good) to see how we can improve it further. If you’ve visited our website in the last few days, you will have found our brand new knowledge base is up and running providing you with another option to resolve a query. But sometimes you just want to speak to a person, a human that understands the issues you’re facing and wants to help you get a resolution…I know I get totally frustrated when I need support and have to go through the dreaded multiple menu systems before eventually speaking to someone who’s not really that interested in speaking to me (I can occasionally be a little sarcastic – I need to work on not doing that!).

Joking aside, we put alot of focus on quality and recruit people that really want to assist our customers.  In fact,  we have doubled our support operation in the last 2 years and also opened up our telephone lines so that we are there for our 30,000 customers 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Last month we had a stand at Internet World at Earls Court where many of you came to see us.  As part of a number of e-commerce support initiatives, we were running all kinds of clinics from ‘Getting Started Online’ to ‘Benchmark Your Business’ using our soon to be released E-Business Benchmark Report.  Here are  a few pictures of what we got up to…including our now infamous Super Human Support mobile!

Personally, I love to listen to any feedback you want to give me (good or bad) as it’s the best way to improve what we currently do – so please drop me a line directly if you have any comments at Colin@sagepay.com.