Customer confidence is all over the map these days. With worries about identify theft and security breaches constantly the news, it takes something to convince customers that your store is the place where they should drop those dollars and scan that card.
If you want to get ahead in this market you have to beat out the competition not just in prices or incentives, but in confidence. One security breach can set a company back a dangerous amount, forcing them to rebuild or try to woo back their customer base when they’re under the pressure of a lot of stress.
With that in mind, the answer is not a complicated point of sale machine or bristling firewalls and security. While you should have those things for safety reasons, the key to restoring customer confidence is to have a simplified point of sale machine. There’s nothing that’s going to restore or win for the first time customer confidence like a smooth experience thanks to a simplified point of sale machine.
Here’s three good reasons why a simple point of sale system is the key to growing your confident consumer base.
The Customer Can Do More Themselves
One of the key factors in a simple point of sale machine, such as a mobile tablet-based POS system, is that customers can actually do a lot of the work themselves. This will make them feel better because they’ll always know exactly where their cards are. There are a lot of things that can stand in the way of customer confidence, but putting the control back in their hands is the surefire way to get it back. People don’t want to hand over their card and have it whisked away, where someone could easily copy the information and they’d never know that it had been taken.
On the other hand, a simple POS system is easy enough for a customer to use right at their table, and the sleek and modern look makes them feel like they’re in an establishment at the forefront of technology, according to Entrepreneur. This is actually sort of funny, considering that tablet based point of sale systems have already been field tested for several years.
You get the credit for the work that other people did turning tablets into a simple but powerful tool for mobile POS. The touch screen design is intuitive enough that customers can use it themselves, meaning that their card never leaves their fingertips. This is the same principle that makes people more willing to tap their cellphone than to swipe their card. However, not everyone has a smartphone and not everyone wants one, so being able to hand your customers a tablet (or swivel the stand around to face them) and having them take care of the hard work means an easier time for your employees and less worry for your customers.
Employees Are Much Less Likely to Make a Mistake
On top of the fact that your customers can handle most of the hard work themselves, there’s also the fact that a simple point of sale system means that your employees won’t be able to make as many mistakes, though human error can never be entirely avoided. However, a simple POS makes it easier to reduce the amount of human error by a large margin.
In a world where clerks who have to enter data manually make two to three times more mistakes (and spend two to three times more time searching for and correcting errors, according to the Houston Chronicle) it’s no wonder that things like Shopify’s barcode scanners and card readers are gaining popularity.
Every mistake that you make comes with a price tag. In some cases the cost may be investor confidence. Every time that a client has to correct an order, bring back and exchange something, or even just point out to your employee that they made a mistake your business is losing trust. It’s not too much to do everything in your power to stop that from happening.
Make your employee’s lives simpler and they’re a lot less likely to actually make the kinds of mistakes that are going to cost you.
You Don’t Run the Risk of Double Selling a Product
Hospitals have started using barcodes and variations to handle patient files. This means that every time the patient has a procedure or otherwise gets attention, a file is updated electronically so that all their care is up to date and cuts down on accidents and double procedures, according to Barcode Discount. Sure, your business might not be the same as a human life, but you can still take advantage of these great organizational opportunities.
Use a good, simple POS to keep track of your online and in store inventory so that you never sell an item in both places. That’s the second best way to kill customer confidence.
Photo credit: HP APJ / Flickr
