For businesses that sell digital goods and services, the pressure to provide an online, fully-functional service 24/7 exists 365 days a year – not just on days like Black Friday. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that your platform can cope with any volume of demand and operate reliably. Here’s how working with a technology partner can help you provide a trustworthy solution that will continually delight your customers.
Black Friday sales typically attract large numbers of customers for 24 hours while discounts are on offer. While intense, this level of demand is the exception rather than the rule for retailers that sell physical products, like electronics or clothes.
For businesses that offer digital goods and services, on the other hand, high demand is an everyday reality– especially as consumers expect to access goods like airtime, data and electricity from their chosen provider seamlessly and immediately. However, because so many outlets provide these goods, consumers can shop elsewhere if their first-choice provider is down.
A bad experience could cost you customer loyalty if you cannot provide the easiest, most reliable service every time. That’s why it’s critical to ensure your system is robust, reliable and always able to cope with varying demand levels.
Providing an always-on service can be challenging with so many moving parts, like reliance on external providers and fluctuating request volumes, going into it. Working with a technology partner with a proven track record of delivering reliable solutions can help you get this right.
Provide a reliable service
To become your customers’ go-to VAS provider, you need to make sure your system ticks the following boxes:
Always online
Providing a comprehensive VAS offering relies on multiple external providers and aggregators. The downside of this is that if their service goes down, you go down too, which will lose you business. Electrum’s preferential routing means you never need to turn customers away. The solution allows you to access multiple providers and aggregators through a single integration point and connect to them in order of preference. This means that if your first choice goes down, you’re automatically routed to your second-, third-, fourth-choice provider. This switching capability ensures maximum uptime, which allows you to protect your commission, offer the best value deals and retain customers.
Quick turnaround times
Being able to access the goods they need quickly is important for consumers. This means that your system needs to operate at a seamless level, no matter the demand you’re faced with. Electrum offers a load balancing solution to help with this. By connecting you to several providers through a single interface, the volume of transactions is spread across providers, rather than routing every transaction to a single provider, which might fail. You decide on the best proportion of traffic to different providers so that you maximise profit. Our switching system then distributes traffic quickly and efficiently so that the transaction load is balanced.
In conclusion: In a fast-changing world, working with a technology provider that can help you build an always-on, highly reliable solution is key to staying ahead. If you’d like to hear more about how Electrum can help you provide a robust VAS solution that even Black Friday won’t take down, get in touch with us here.
