How To Reduce Common Point-Of-Sale Pain Points
Due to technology advancements and its fast paced nature people have a lot of options these days, so it's important to make a good first impression in order to retain customers.
Don't let a hold up at the till spoil your customers' shopping experience. We have put together our top three pointers on how to improve their experience.
Take back your space!
One of the most common point-of-sale pain points is space, or lack thereof. The space you do have is slowly taken up by bags, merchandising materials, stock, and other miscellaneous items.
Traditional computer cases tend to take up a lot of space in your cramped POS area. As a result, any storage is staked around your machine which can block off the airflow that your computer needs, which can create hardware failure and reliability issues.
In order to make the most of the space that you have, most people tend to use the space around their traditional workstation. What many people don't realise,can block airflow to the PC which causes temperatures to rise, reduces performance and leaves the hardware vulnerable to crashes or failure.
There is now a number of PCs you can choose from that are considerably smaller in size than a traditional workstation which do not compromise performance and speed.
There are even PCs you can mount to the back of your monitor to save even more space and allows for the airflow that computers need. For example: This pro desk (pictured) is roughly the size of a lunch box. A wireless mouse and keyboard can be added to reduce clutter even further.
Let your PC retire
A lot of people wonder why their PC is performing so poorly and often an aging fleet is at the heart of the problem. If your hardware is nearing its fifth or sixth birthday it may be time to consider an upgrade and plan a refresh cycle into your future business strategy. Most computers have an expected life expectancy of two to four years. After three years, your computer may still operate, but will have degraded performance and hardware will begin to fail, which can be incremental or sudden.
A hardware refresh cycle is a recurring time frame in which to replace hardware. This could include putting the replacement hardware on an operating lease to spread the cost out. Alternatively, purchasing replacements piece by piece over the course of a few years to ensure that each item stays in warranty to minimise risk and downtime when the worst happens.
If you are apologising to your customer about how long transactions take, maybe it’s time to review your current point-of-sale set-up.
Create a faster checkout experience
There are a number of options available when it comes to EFTPOS these days, depending on how busy your retail environment is, the following list could improve your customers check out experience:
Wireless pin pads.
Network-based machines (rather than phone-based.)
Contact-less payment methods.
High-speed internet connectivity.
It's important to choose the right one for your business. A wireless pin-pad might be able to reduce clutter, while contact-less payment methods increase productivity and make the checkout process a lot faster.