According to Gartner research, more than 64% of consumers value a positive shopping experience. Providing a consistent and smooth customer experience across the consumer journey is a huge advantage in the increasingly competitive retail sector.
As a result, some companies are using their retail POS system as both a payment instrument and a practical means of providing high-quality service. This post will present these recommended practices to enhance the POS experience and boost sales and customer retention.
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Understanding The Point Of Sales For Small Businesses
Point of sales systems for small business is a simple way of collecting consumer payments or monitoring sales. Although simple, the setup can differ depending on your way of selling, whether online, in a physical store, or both.
Today’s fully digital best point of sales software allows you to check out a customer anywhere. You only require a POS app and a mobile or tablet device with internet access.
How does a POS system operate, then? Typically, it works as follows:
- A client chooses to purchase your good or service. If you operate a real store, they can request that a salesperson make their purchase. The employee might use a barcode scanner to determine the price. You may visually scan things using the camera on your cellphone with some POS systems, such as Square Point of Sale. This step occurs when a consumer adds items to their cart and clicks the checkout button.
- The cost of the item is determined by your POS system, including any sales taxes. The system then adjusts the inventory count to reflect the item’s sale.
- The customer pays you. The customer can pay via credit card, tap card, debit card, loyalty point, gift card, or cash to complete the purchase.
- The transaction at the Point of sale is complete. The deal is completed, the receipt is generated, and the item purchased is shipped to the consumer.
Best practices to improve POS experience
1. Fix inventory problems
Out-of-stock causes customers’ irritation and lowers a company’s expected revenue. Customers who don’t purchase the item they desire also have a non-recalling POS experience, which increases the likelihood that they won’t return.
POS systems can easily resolve this issue when connected smoothly with inventory management software. Real-time inventory tracking, reconciliation, and inventory levels ensure that stores are always stocked. Use a low stock alarm, auto-replenishment, and restocking mechanism to guarantee item availability.
2. Offer quick checkout
Customers will become impatient if the checkout procedure takes too long since they value their time. Make sure your payment processing is as quick and easy as feasible if clients are willing to wait in line. An improved POS solution can help retailers speed up that process:
- Use barcode scanning instead of manual entry to reduce inventory errors and manual data entry by integrating barcode scanning and full inventory management features into modern POS solutions. It shortens the checkout process and gives clients an incredibly speedy POS experience.
- On the sales floor, check out: Once a buyer decides to purchase something from you, immediately process the payment. Customers can pay at the counter without standing in line. However, a tablet or mobile POS system is needed for this technique.
3. Consider different payment options
Retailers must deliver high-quality goods and thoroughly understand their clients’ demands, including their preferred payment methods. Therefore, if you don’t accommodate your customer’s preferred payment method, you’ll never know how many sales possibilities you’ll lose.
Therefore, shops must provide various payment choices to remain competitive and attract customers. An open-source system like Magento POS can adapt to the quick development of new payment methods like:
- Cash
- Credit and debit cards
- Mobile wallet and e-wallet payments
- Gift card
- Buy Now, Pay Later
- QR Code
- Contactless or touchless payments
- Mobile payments like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay
Additionally, these electronic methods provide a quick POS experience and do away with the need for clients to search for their wallets once more to select the best payment option for your business.
4. Provide prepaid credit
Your consumers may return to your store and save up for future large purchases if you offer prepaid store credits. Customers merely need to read or scan the customer card code to accept the transaction when using this method, making it a quick and convenient POS experience. Your staff can use the POS directly:
- To view their client card, click on their name.
- Connect their prepaid credit account
- Increase the customer’s account with in-store credit.
5. Offer numerous receipt alternatives
If you provided several receipt options, that would be beneficial. The ideal approach is to send email receipts instead of directly printing tickets on paper. Many customers prefer to send electronic receipts because they wish to protect the environment and save print wait times. Fintech software development services can help small businesses create custom POS systems that meet their needs and requirements. This can save companies time and money and help them improve their efficiency and profitability.
The key impact of this POS experience improvement is far more than just improving your brand’s perception among customers:
- When consumers provide their email addresses, POS can sync the information with the eCommerce system and enter it into the main database.
- Using POS data, you can establish email marketing campaigns to inform customers about customized promotions based on their preferences and past purchases.
6. Introduce an omnichannel POS system.
Businesses can successfully deploy line-busting strategies and omnichannel POS experiences with the help of a modern POS system:
- Purchases made through an eCommerce website or app are known as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS). Customers can pick up things curbside, in the store, or a pickup truck after store employees have prepared the ready goods.
- Customers place orders and pay for them over the phone.
These two techniques shorten customer wait times while minimizing physical touch for everyone’s safety during COVID-19. Additionally, recording and preparing orders via the POS system requires less work and human error.
7. FacilitatingPOS self-service experience
Self-service is becoming increasingly common among consumers, and many businesses have already effectively integrated it. For instance, McDonald’s sales climbed by 5-6% after some locations installed self-service kiosks. Self-service Giving customers more control to pay for their orders directly, POS is a customer-centric experience that genuinely trusts its users. Self-service kiosks also cut down on staffing needs at the counter and lines. For the restaurant and service sectors, it is the finest choice.
8. Boost client services
Enhancing customer support across the entire buying experience with an EPOS solution that interacts with eCommerce is possible. Along with rapid payments, POS systems can offer a variety of useful capabilities to improve customer service standards and the POS experience:
- Creating client profiles Every time a customer interacts with you, collect data about them. You can better grasp client insights by using POS data. From there, easily customize and cater recommendations to the tastes of each customer.
- Improve your client service: Provide mPOS or iPad POS for in-person assistance at floor sales. More product details can be found by your personnel, who can also make prompt recommendations. If the store is out of supply, eCommerce POS integration can offer real-time updated information on product availability in other stores.
- Try chatbot functionality on your POS: According to support channel rankings, live chat is the favorite help channel for millennials. However, 77% of consumers believe the wait time to contact live service is too long. Chatbots are a good option in this situation. Customers will get their questions answered right away. The business owner can lower the cost of labor as a win-win option.
9. Gather and respond to further client feedback
Your clients will appreciate your efforts to collect and process feedback rapidly. Additionally, consumer reviews offer more knowledge than solely quantitative methods. However, current research demonstrates that:
- 90% of consumers prefer to read online reviews before accessing e-commerce websites, and 88% believe that the recommended products have been thoroughly reviewed by their people.
- According to research from Survey Monkey, 81% of customers will provide feedback when their interaction with a brand or company is negative, and 85% of customers prefer to do so.
- 85% of small and medium-sized businesses claim online customer feedback has benefited their operations. According to Barclays, there might be a 3.2 billion dollar opportunity in the UK alone in the next ten years if businesses optimize for the feedback economy.
A store can lessen a customer’s bad experience, according to 52% of customers, if they can provide real-time feedback.
Conclusion
The in-store customer experience, particularly in the realm of business software like a good POS system, can be significantly improved, and the POS also collects useful information about consumers’ buying preferences and offers real-time reports. The POS provides customized discounts that encourage repeat business and customer loyalty based on customer purchase history analysis.
Because POS experience may help you sustainably increase income, deploying a POS system that matches your business model is a worthwhile investment.
