Personalizing your customer experience not only makes customers feel valued, but it creates a personal connection with those customers from which each party can greatly benefit. A personalized connection with your customer base creates trust, which is something that people desire in their favorite retailers and brands. You can use POS systems to help personalize the experience for your customers, so even after they’ve left your store, the memory of that transaction remains fresh in their mind.
Making Ordering Easier
With proper inventory management and an effective ordering system in your POS software, you can easily manage customer orders, including custom variations of their favorite products. Customizing orders for your customers is a great way to improve their experience with your brand and increase the trust between the two.
Modern POS software comes equipped with great inventory tools that make tracking stock easier, more efficient, and less prone to those human errors we often encounter when counting manually. Eliminating the need for recounts and keeping an accurate inventory count helps customers maintain faith in the system, certain that their favorite products will always be in stock and available to them.
Creating Custom Marketing Campaigns
With detailed customer profiles and contact information, you can track the purchase habits of your customer base and learn which products they purchase frequently. By learning their spending habits, you can tailor your marketing campaigns to be more custom to that specific customer, rather than sending a cookie-cutter ad to everyone.
By personalizing your marketing efforts, you’ll let the customer know you value their business and are providing them with the opportunity to purchase their favorite items. You can include discounts and promotions as well, specifically tailored to the taste of your customer.
The more custom that marketing email is, the more likely the customer is to open it and follow up on the information provided within. Personalization says a lot about the business focused on it. It lets customers know that their interests are valuable to the business, and that said business is working hard to provide those products they value most.
Optimize The Checkout Process
Customers are unlikely to feel valued if they spend time standing in long lines waiting for your lengthy checkout process to conclude. If you’ve ever been stuck in a long line at your favorite store, you know exactly how frustrating this can be.
By providing a seamless and efficient checkout process, you’re letting customers know that one of their most valuable assets is important to you: their time. Time is money, as they say, and the longer the checkout process takes, the less valuable that transaction becomes.
A frustrating checkout process may very well cost you a number of customers as well. People tend to walk away from complex processes or long lines, so keep your checkout process streamlined by using a modern POS system.
Payment Flexibility
A POS system offers an advantage you may not have considered before: the ability to accept multiple payment methods. Most transactions are completed via credit or debit card, however, there are other payment options that are less common and therefore not always accepted by retail stores. Touchless payment methods like Apple Pay are often not supported at POS terminals, so having the ability to accept such payment methods puts you ahead of the competition and can attract a customer base you otherwise wouldn’t have appealed to.
On the other hand, not accepting these various payment methods can actually turn away potential customers. First-time shoppers may see that their preferred payment method isn’t supported at your store, and decide they’d rather go elsewhere.
Simplifying Returns and Exchanges
When a customer is unhappy with their product or needs to return a defective item, the return process should be simple and your POS system should support this simplicity. An overly complicated return process can make an already unhappy customer even more unhappy, perhaps even to the point of abandoning your brand.
An optimized POS system will make the exchange process as simple as collecting the item and scanning it back into inventory. With quick search tools, you’ll be able to find a replacement or issue a refund in just a few minutes or offer discounts or promotions as an incentive for the customer to return to the store.
By simplifying this often frustrating process, you’ll let your customers know that you care and wish to make the mistake right for them. This encourages that trust we’ve emphasized so much in this article, the crucial component to solidifying those customer relationships and increasing revenue.
Familiarity
Modern POS systems allow for the creation of customer profiles containing personal information on frequent shoppers. From here, you can learn their name, purchasing, habits, and preferred products. This allows you to develop that crucial personal connection with your customer base.
Customers want to feel a human connection with the business. They don’t want to feel like a number, or just another body to generate a profit from. Establishing a personal connection makes your business feel more like a trusted friend than a foreign entity pushing their products.
Conclusion
Your POS system can work for you in a number of ways, not the least of which is by helping to foster those personal relationships between you and your customer base. By making the shopping experience more personalized, you’ll ensure the customer’s renewed interest in your brand, even when the competition can offer a better deal.
Image Credits: POS System from Taras Vyshnya /Shutterstock