Payment processing leader Basys achieves 90% first call resolution with the help of Microsoft Teams

Paying for a morning coffee or a last-minute grocery run; the act of tapping a credit card to a terminal happens so many times a day, it fades into the background. Even without a physical card, online payments are ubiquitous, and sometimes automatic; part of the white noise of modern life. Basys, a payment processing business, was founded to bring a human element to this largely impersonal process. 

Kenny Thompson, Executive Vice President of Partner Relations at Basys, has been there since the beginning. “We started out in 2002 slinging credit card processing machines,” he laughs. Customer service, that human element, has always been a part of how Basys differentiates itself. “We had to do customer service very well to stand out in the industry,” says Thompson. Today, Basys is navigating rapid expansion, from just a few employees to 160 of them, along with changing customer demands. To meet the moment and continue to deliver outstanding customer service, Basys is turning its attention to technology, offering new products and services to customers and investing in leading-edge technology to future-proof its business. “I’m more excited about the future of the company now than I was 20 years ago,” says Thompson. 

A changing industry calls for improved collaboration, time savings

The world of payment processing has changed significantly in the two decades since Basys was founded. Edwin Martin, President at Basys, looks at transformation as a necessity. “It’s no longer enough to simply deliver credit card processing,” he says. “If you can’t do more than one thing, you are falling behind in our industry.” With that reality in mind, Basys embraced change. “We have fully transitioned to a company that develops our own products and services and solutions so that we can tailor them to the segments that we serve,” says Martin. 

To ensure that innovation doesn’t lag, Basys deployed Microsoft 365 E5. “As we continue to evolve, we use the Microsoft 365 collaboration tools to move faster,” says Chris Borchers, Chief Technical and Product Officer at Basys. Microsoft Teams has emerged as a go-to platform for collaboration at the company, and Microsoft Teams Phone replaced an existing telephony platform. Basys uses Teams to help connect disparate business units for more effective meetings. “We use Teams to share information in real time,” says Borchers, a process he contrasts to previous ways of working that involved time-consuming presentations to keep departments aligned. “We are able to save a lot of meeting time and about 10 hours of prep time per event,” he says. “It allows us to prioritize our work.” 

In addition to saving time, Basys uses Teams to streamline workflows for employees across the business. Martin explains: “In the past, individuals used a combination of tools and methods to collaborate, including Slack, text, and email. Now with Teams, we have everything we need to collaborate effectively in a single platform.” 

Boosting NPS scores and customer retention with Tier 1 support in Teams

As Basys expands the scope of its business and takes on new customers, the company’s focus on customer service hasn’t wavered. The organization uses Teams to conduct Tier 1 support. “We have Tier 1 support running in a Teams chat and we always have people monitoring the chat,” says Borchers. “That way, we know we always have eyes on the chat and it is easy to set up and maintain.” Basys also uses Teams to help respond to customers faster and easily include multiple departments in the resolution process. “Employees rally constantly around external and internal Teams channels,” says Martin. “If an issue comes through one of these channels, multiple departments collaborate in real time to solve it as quickly as possible.” Today, the business boasts an NPS score of +70, a metric that reflects positive customer sentiment. “Our NPS score is up over the last year and we have also experienced an increase in customer retention,” says Thompson. 

Basys also uses Teams to stay in tune with customer sentiment. “I can jump into Teams support channels and see what types of questions our customers are asking,” says Martin. “Then, when I attend a product design meeting, I am prepared with real-world sentiment from our customers. That helps us be more customer centric when we design new products.” 

Consolidating on the Teams platform to save costs, improve first-call resolution

By moving to Microsoft 365 and Teams Phone, Basys has reduced costs and consolidated on a single vendor for telephony and collaboration. The move is also helping ensure reliable service for customers. “We have fewer outages now that we use Teams Phone for calling,” says Borchers. “Teams Phone is a huge upgrade compared to what we used before,” agrees Martin. “In the past, our call center would often go down and when that happened, we had no way of helping our customers.” 

Basys has also achieved an impressive first call resolution rate of more than 90 percent, a development Borchers credits in part to the reliability of the Teams platform. “Our 90 percent first-call resolution probably wouldn’t be possible without Teams,” he says. 

Maintaining a high level of security in a regulated industry

Basys is part of a highly regulated industry, and the organization uses Microsoft 365 E5 security tools to help stay compliant. “We use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to maintain a highly secure environment,” says Borchers. Basys employees also use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to monitor shadow IT. Basys also uses Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention to help keep sensitive information protected, including credit card data. “Having tools such as Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention empowers us to easily share information and keep it highly secure, knowing the data will not leave the system,” says Martin. “There are a lot of benefits to the Microsoft 365 E5 platform that help make us safer and more secure,” adds Borchers. 

And, because those security features come with Microsoft, Basys has been able to further reduce the number of vendors that perform tasks such as network monitoring. Borchers explains: “We use the Microsoft 365 out-of-the-box security capabilities to save money in the long term.” 

Maintaining a close-knit culture in a hybrid world

While the business considers itself predominantly an in-person workplace (with a Kansas City Coolest Office Spaces award to prove it), Basys uses Teams to build a dynamic hybrid work environment for employees. “Culture is huge at Basys,” says Borchers. “We believe we have mastered the hybrid setup with great support to collaborate in the office and the tools to work from home without missing a beat.” For instance, Basys used Teams to break up a stagnant operating model into smaller, more dynamic teams that conduct standup meetings and daily collaboration within the Teams platform. 

Lively social interactions happen in Teams too, ensuring that even remote employees feel included. “All-employee channels are used to banter, celebrate life wins, and share employee anniversaries and birthdays,” says Martin. Basys also uses Teams-enabled meeting rooms to help bring offsite employees into the in-person culture of the company. “We have updated our auditorium with state-of-the-art Teams capabilities so that every employee can join in and feel the excitement of the events we hold there,” adds Martin. “It’s a big part of our culture, to celebrate employees.” 

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