or more than 20 years, The Green Sheet, Inc. has provided timely coverage of the rapidly expanding and evolving payment processing marketplace. In our continuing efforts to provide useful and actionable information for you, the merchant level salesperson, (MLS), we developed a joint venture, with Cynergy Data, a monthly online survey, to find out what you want and need to succeed in this industry.

Your answers provide us with insight about the tools and information we provide. The Green Sheet wants to bring the right information to the right people in the right way!

We use a third-party survey management service to ensure the poll results are blind and that each participant responds only once. We post a new "You Tell Us" survey every month on www.greensheet.com . We announced the results of our previous survey last month ("You Tell Us" June 2004 Survey Results," The Green Sheet, July 26, 2004, issue 04:07:02). Following are July's survey results:

To track the demographics of our respondents we asked, "Which of the following best describes your role, personally, within the payment processing industry?"

• Feet on the Street: 35.8%
• Sales Management: 23.2%
• Corporate Management: 23.2
• Vendor/Processor: 10.5%
• Other: 7.4%

Most of you indicated you would choose to do business with a company based on quality of service (87.4%) rather than low price (14.7%).

More than 68% of our respondents feel that their acquirer/processor provides support 100% of the time when it's needed. Twenty percent responded that their acquirer/processor provided support about 50% of the time. Less than 10% responded "rarely," and 2.4% responded "hardly ever."

How Well Does Your Acquirer/Processor Answers Calls?:

My Acquirer/Processor's Staff Is:

• Very Knowledgeable: 59.3%
• Somewhat Aware: 29.1%
• Not Too Bright: 10.5%
• Utterly Useless: 1.2%

• Almost Immediately: 34.1%
• In a Timely Manner: 45.9%
• Eventually: 16.5%
• Never: 3.5%

How Many of Your May 2004 Terminal Deployments Included PIN Pads?

• None: 26.2%
• 1 – 4: 25.0%
• 5 – 9: 15.5%
• 10 – 14: 4.8%
• 15+: 28.6%

We update the poll with new questions every month, and the August 2004 survey is now live. Please visit GS Online and click on one of the "You Tell Us" links to respond. It takes less than five minutes to complete and responses are anonymous.

If you have questions you would like to see added to an upcoming poll, please send them to julie@greensheet.com.