Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, which for many retailers means peak season. Whether you’re selling fragrances, underwear, flowers or any other romantic gifts, it’s time to up your game to ensure your customers’ shopping experience is all about romance and not about stress.
Here are six tips to help prepare your in-store payments for the most romantic time of the year.
1. Innovate at the point of interaction
The days of long queues in retail stores really should be a thing of the past. Rather than relying on traditional point-of-sale interactions, SoftPOS enables your staff to meet your customers on the shop floor to purchase their items.
With SoftPOS, your sales staff can take payments on smartphones and other enabled devices – they don’t even need a POS terminal, just the right software downloaded to the device.
Staff can then engage with customers and take payments directly at the point of interaction with no need to queue. It’s fantastic for customer experience at a super busy time of year. Plus, if you integrate this with your social media, you can boost online engagement at the same time too.
2. Go beyond the initial sale and add romantic extras
One of the key benefits of SoftPOS systems is that they’re integrated with other systems through open APIs. This means retailers can seamlessly connect their inventory management and customer relationship management software on the same device.
When staff are dealing with customers directly on the shop floor, they can quickly tap into these other systems to offer complementary product recommendations. Staff also have the opportunity to personalise purchases, for example a smartPOS device with a printer could be used to add a personalised message to a bunch of flowers or to a gift card.
These small romantic extras could really make it a Valentine’s Day to remember. Plus, it offers a more rounded experience and a frictionless process for customers, as well as a fantastic chance to cross-sell products.
3. Make sure your staff have real-time knowledge
If you’re relying on your staff to offer product recommendations directly to customers on the shop floor, they need to be equipped with the knowledge to do so. This means they must be well-versed in your product stock, but also know which suggestions to make to boost your bottom line.
Up-to-date product and sales data is key for this. With the right payment ecosystem in place, retailers have access to real-time data to understand sales patterns, identify trends and make data-driven decisions. You can quickly inform staff which products to push and recommend to customers.
Not only does it better enhance the customer experience in real-time, but it also helps boost sales on high-margin products at this peak time of year.
4. Take the pressure off sales staff with unattended payment solutions
A self-service system typically consists of a touchscreen interface, a barcode scanner or RFID reader and a payment terminal – they are all integrated into a single device. Customers simply select the items they want to buy – whether on a touchscreen, with an RFID reader or with a barcode scanner.
Unattended payments on the shop floor offer a quick and simple solution for customers to pay. Plus, you’re not relying on staff to ensure the interaction goes smoothly. As a business, you can push a higher volume of customers through the checkout process more efficiently, and make effective staffing decisions at the same time.
5. Let your customers pay the way they want
Whether at the normal checkout or on the shopfloor with SoftPOS, offering a variety of payment methods is the foundation for a seamless customer experience. We’re talking contactless and mobile payments, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) as well as any trending alternative payment methods.
In-person payment orchestration is key to this, allowing data to flow between payment methods and terminals, and the backend systems that process transactions. Ensuring good orchestration is especially important where there are very rigid or legacy payment systems that can slow payment processes down.
6. Use data to learn more about your customers
You might think you know your customers, but look at the data and it might surprise you. Customer needs and desires continually change, whether it’s the payment methods they choose, the products they’re buying or the average order value.
Access to the right customer data helps you optimise your in-person customer experience and push the right products at the right time. At Aevi, our in-person payment orchestration software ties in-person payments in with your digital payments. You can manage all your payment systems (whether SoftPOS or self-service) from a single interface. Not only does this help to give your customers a seamless checkout experience, but it also gives you access to the data to understand your customers and make data-driven decisions to help boost the profitability of your business.
Discover more about our platform and what it can mean for in-person payments at this important time of year.
