Introduction

The new rules in Major League Baseball aimed at shortening average game times can have several impacts on merchandising and concession sales at stadiums:  MLB revealed the pitch clocks have shaved an average of 26 minutes a game to 2 hours and 36 minutes.  The following are some of the ways that game day sales have been impacted.

Reduced sales volume: With shorter game times, fans will spend less time in the stadium, which could lead to fewer opportunities for them to purchase merchandise and concessions. This may result in a decrease in overall sales volume.

Shift in spending patterns: As fans adapt to the new game duration, they may alter their spending habits. For example, they might make quicker purchases before the game or during breaks, rather than casually browsing and buying items throughout the game. This could lead to increased sales in specific periods, such as pre-game or between innings.

Focus on efficiency:With a shift in buying habits, stadium operators should  increase the efficiency of their merchandising and concession operations. This could include streamlining product offerings or offering item of the day promotions, optimizing staffing, and adopting technology to speed up transactions. 

Changes in pricing: Stadiums may adjust their pricing strategies to compensate for the potential decrease in sales volume. This could involve offering discounts or promotions to encourage fans to spend more in a shorter time frame, or even increasing prices to maintain revenue levels.

Increased emphasis on fan experience: To keep fans engaged and spending during shorter games, stadiums may invest more in enhancing the overall fan experience. This could include offering unique or limited-edition merchandise, creating innovative food and beverage options, or providing interactive experiences that encourage fans to visit concession stands and merchandise outlets.

Off-stadium sales: Teams and stadiums might also increase their focus on online and off-stadium sales channels to offset potential losses from decreased in-stadium sales. This could involve improving their online stores, offering exclusive online deals, or partnering with local retailers for co-branded merchandise.

Ultimately, the impact of the new rules on merchandising and concession sales at a stadium will depend on how well teams and stadium operators adapt to the changes and implement strategies to maintain or increase sales in the new environment. Improving the fan experience with improved checkout efficiency, allowing fans to return to their seats will be paramount.

Tech for Faster Stadium Sales

To speed up transaction times in merchandising at stadiums and improve the overall fan experience, there are several technologies that can be adopted:

RFID technology: Integrating RFID tags into merchandise and using RFID scanners at the point of sale can expedite the checkout process by instantly updating inventory and allowing for quicker transactions.

Mobile ordering apps: Fans can use their smartphones to pre-order and pay for merchandise, allowing them to skip lines and simply pick up their items at designated locations or have them delivered to their seats.

Self-service kiosks: Equipped with touchscreens and payment processing systems, these kiosks enable fans to quickly place orders and pay for merchandise without waiting in line at traditional counters.

Automated inventory management: Smart inventory systems can help ensure merchandise is always in stock and readily available, reducing wait times for items to be retrieved from storage.

In-seat merchandise: Installing small vending machines or merchandise storage lockers near seating areas can allow fans to quickly purchase items without leaving their seats.

Digital wallets: By creating a digital wallet or a stadium-specific currency, fans can preload money onto their accounts for faster transactions at merchandise stands.

Queue management: Implementing queue management systems, like virtual queuing or line-monitoring apps, can help distribute customers evenly among available service points and reduce wait times. Giving fas access to approximate wait times at different stands can also help them plan their purchasing trips

Augmented reality (AR) shopping: AR can allow fans to virtually try on merchandise and make purchases from their seats, eliminating the need to visit a physical store or stand.

By adopting these technologies, stadiums can create a more efficient merchandising experience for fans, allowing them to spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the event.

Item of the Day

Determining the Item of the day sales can be complicated, ideally they should create an urgency for fans to buy a specific item without cannibalizing existing sales, you can follow a systematic approach that leverages data and considers various factors. Here’s an algorithm to help you identify the “Item of the Day” for each game:

Collect data: Gather historical sales data for all items in your inventory. Ideally, you should have data for the past few seasons to better understand sales trends and customer preferences. Also, take note of any special events or promotions that might have influenced sales.

Determine item popularity: Calculate the average sales per game for each item. Rank them according to their popularity. This will help you identify the items that are selling well and those that need a boost.

Identify slow-moving items: From the ranked list, identify items that have a low sales volume per game and could benefit from being the “Item of the Day.”

Factor in seasonality and trends: Consider the time of the year, special events, or other trends that might affect item popularity. For example, if your team has a rivalry game coming up, you might want to promote items related to that rivalry.

Create a non-repeating schedule: Once you have identified a pool of items that can be featured as the “Item of the Day,” create a schedule for the 81 home games that ensures no item is repeated.

Set a discount strategy: Determine the discount percentage or pricing strategy for each “Item of the Day.” You might want to offer a higher discount for slow-moving items or lower discounts for more popular items to avoid cannibalizing sales.

Monitor and adjust: Track the sales performance of the “Item of the Day” and compare it with historical sales data. If you notice any negative impact on overall sales, adjust your strategy accordingly.

Build an end-to-end digital commerce strategy across your online and offline channels that drives growth for your business. Enable a unified approach for working with partners, licensors and suppliers to deliver a consistent experience for consumers as they move through the world of retail. With unified commerce, you can capture customer interactions across the many touch points of your business, and aggregate them in a centralized environment. You’ll be able to see shopper behavior patterns, build a deeper understanding of shoppers and consumers, and serve them better across all your channels.

What is the difference between Omnichannel and Unified Commerce?

Omnichannel has become a major competitive advantage, but unified commerce goes far beyond traditional Omnichannel. The difference between Omnichannel and unified commerce is that Omnichannel retailing consists of siloed, unconnected systems and channels, whereas unified commerce connects all back end systems with customer-facing channels in a manner where critical data can pass between these systems, in real time, and still ensure the truth.

As a leader in omnichannel commerce, we help you connect with customers and drive growth throughout the year. With our unified commerce software platform, you can create a business that gives your customers greater choice, while offering you a single platform to manage all of your store locations, web sites and channels. Unified commerce helps you track your performance across channels and regions so you can make more informed business decisions, and better prepare for future change.

With unified commerce, you’ll have one view of every customer and every transaction. You can better understand the relationship between your customers and your products, identify what they most want to buy and when they want it, and deliver services that are uniquely suited to their needs. You can also establish one payment system that lives underneath the entire experience, making check-out quick and seamless whether customers are shopping in stores or online. Most customers don’t think about separate channels when they shop. They think about their needs, the brands that meet them, and how you make doing business with you relevant and easy. This means transactions should happen seamlessly across channels, regardless of the device or location from which customers start.

Unified commerce integrates all customer-facing and backend systems via a centralized platform, making it possible to scale your business, regardless of channel or region. This reduces the time and resources spent managing multiple providers, improves operational efficiencies, and makes it possible to capture consolidated data insights across multiple touchpoints. By unifying payments from every channel into a single platform, you can identify and link shoppers across channels, helping you better fulfill cross-channel purchases. Learn how opening a store affects your ecommerce sales in the same area, or see how an in-app loyalty program affects in-store purchases.

Customers inevitably want more from their favorite online retailers. They want quick and easy ways to shop, but still feel like they’re interacting with a real person if they need to contact customer service. And when it comes time for home delivery, customers don’t just want the items to be delivered, they expect an awesome experience every time. Usually, the more options your customers have, the better off they’ll be, which is why unified commerce puts consumers in control of multiple shopping destinations.

Unified commerce ensures that your customers can interact with your brand consistently and without friction, regardless of how or where they shop. Customers expect speed, convenience, personalization and more. Unified commerce enables businesses to stay focused on delivering great experiences across all channels, while gaining deep insights into customer behavior which enables them to serve their customers better and drive increased sales.

As a business leader, you’re looking to grow your company in both the present and the future. Unified commerce presents a unique opportunity to streamline global growth and culture across your organization, while ensuring all of your teams share the same digital tools. Unified Commerce represents an exciting opportunity to streamline global growth and serve your customers better. A unified commerce program will help you simplify processes, create a cohesive brand experience, and improve customer engagement across every device.

Start up businesses on a unified commerce platform exceed customer expectations, and save the merchant from having multiple third party apps and payments. Retailcloud provides the best solution for any business looking to eliminate single channels and unify them to fall under one platform.

Schedule your demo today at: https://schedule.retailcloud.com/#/customer/retailcloudappointments

Why are brands still investing in the age-old loyalty strategy? Because 3.3 billion is a staggering number, which is only escalating and every brand knows a retained customer is more valuable than an acquired one. The strategy may be decades old, but the dynamics of loyalty programs are periodically constantly evolving to appeal to the tastes of the newer audiences, cater to the needs of the hour and cope with ever-increasing competition. In order to increase loyalty programs and overall consumer retention, companies have taken to expanding their rewards programs to incorporate social and behavioral actions while also attempting to provide their customers with a more personalized experience.

Customer retention programs are a great way to reward your customers for their loyalty and frequent engagement with your brand. Let’s be honest, we as customers generally prefer to do business with people that are happy, responsive and most importantly feel valued. A great customer loyalty program adds value by distinguishing your brand from other competitors. It can also accelerate the loyalty life cycle.

Loyalty Marketing in retailcloud CRM is a solution that helps merchants give the right offer to their customers, at the right time and in the right way. This helps merchants attract new customers, retain existing customers and reactivate dormant ones. With Loyalty Marketing, you will have a 360° view of your customers and their profiles, purchasing history and even behaviors.

Through the Loyalty Marketing feature, we aim to help businesses build relationships with their customers and encourage customer participation. By encouraging your customers to engage with your brand through sharing content, making referrals and spreading the word about your business, you can create a strong base of dedicated advocates that will be more likely to continue engaging with your brand throughout their whole journey with you. Loyalty Marketing Programs are designed to engage customers with a points based program that they can use to exchange for freebies and perks. Including things like: Exchanging points for cashback, discounts, merchandise, product discounts or exclusive offers.

At retailcloud we offer a complete text messaging service that allows you to send personalized, targeted messages to your customers according to the specific goals for each program. We handle everything from customer opt-in/out, to sending out texts, keeping track of unsubscribes and maintaining your lists. We also do data mining and analysis on our customers from text message campaigns so that you can accurately measure the effectiveness of your campaigns based on what segments respond best.

Loyalty marketing has been proven to positively impact businesses in every industry, as it impacts all key metrics such as customer retention, expansion, and profit margins. By creating a comprehensive loyalty program that allows for modern marketing techniques, you can turn your customers into advocates for your brand. Since modern consumers trust peers over advertising, fostering loyal customers who will then speak out on your behalf is simply a smart business move.

Loyalty is a powerful business strategy, but only if you have the right tools to drive it. At retailcloud, we offer a loyalty marketing platform that enables your team to create and deploy smart loyalty plans to maximize customer retention and increase sales. And our solutions can be deployed within minutes, and will contain all the support you need. Whether you’re looking to enhance your current program or launch your company’s first loyalty initiative, let us help!

(If you would like to schedule a live demo with a sales engineer from retailcloud, you may do so here: https://schedule.retailcloud.com/#/customer/retailcloudappointments)

Customer service is one of the most important factors in the success of the retail business. Positive customer service will contribute to the overall growth of a business. Improving customer service can help a business grow, increase sales and profits, and lower operating costs.

Importance of Customer Service

Businesses that deliver poor customer service often have unhappy customers who will not return or recommend them to others. That means they also have lower chances for expanding their business by word-of-mouth marketing. Moreover, the price businesses must pay for poor performance is actually high since they don’t get repeat visits from their customers and consequently lose out on opportunities to make more money through repeat purchases.

Here are 7 ways to improve your retail customer service:

1. Listen to your Customers’ Feedback

Customers are the experts of their own needs and they know the best way to solve those needs. Make sure you listen to what they have to say and then work on fixing those problems.

2. Satisfy Customers’ Needs and Expectations

Aim to satisfy your customers as best as you can by getting their satisfaction surveys to see what you are doing right or wrong, then make changes accordingly.

3. React Quickly to Customers’ Questions or Concerns

When your customers have any questions or concerns, it is very important that you keep them informed about the progress of their orders. If you cannot respond immediately, assure them that you will get back to them soon.

4. Train Your Employees on Customer Service

To improve the customer service of your retail business, make sure your employees are trained on how to deliver outstanding customer service. Make sure they include what to say, how to say it, and what not to say in their training program.

5. Commit to Providing Excellent Customer Service with First Impressions

Creating a positive first impression will help set the scene for building trust with new customers or clients with whom you are working towards building long-term relationships. The key is that it must be consistent throughout the company’s operation.

6. Offer Personalized Service

Personalized service builds a good foundation of customer loyalty. This is especially true when it comes to retaining your existing customers and acquiring new ones. Consider each customer as an individual with a set of unique needs and wants that will determine the way you work with them.

7. Use Technology to Improve Customer Service

You can use technology, such as online ordering systems, to improve your customer service operations and increase efficiency. Online shopping has been increasing in popularity these days, so it is important to keep things simple and easy for the customers while they shop online or over the phone. Make sure you have a website that represents your brand values and vision.

Conclusion

Without professional help and smart tools, it is almost impossible to improve customer service. A little investment in the right tools can help you to take your business to a whole new level. Giving your customers the needed information and service is the only way to make things better for your business and the customers.

At retailcloud we love lists; our support team keeps a list of all features that are requested by users, our partner team keeps a list of what is important to our partners and our product team keeps yet another one on what are key industry drivers.  

Recently our AI and analytics team was playing with some models to mash up all the data and see what features should be developed based on these three lists as well as what could have the greatest impact on our customer’s bottom line.

If you have been following our blogs you will see that we, and our industry, have been talking a lot about the impact of customer retention and building brand loyalty and experiences,  and so while a feedback and  rating system was not on our product roadmap we were not altogether surprised that our AI modeling told us that an application where customers could provide instant feedback to merchants, AND where merchants had tools and insights to make customers into fans made sense.

And so feedbk (pronounced feedback) was born; feedbk is a real time rating application that allows merchants to easily obtain feedback from their customers at the Point of Sale. It keeps track of 3 metrics for a retailer;

This feedback is automatically combined with segmentation which is critical in allowing operators to immediately identify problem areas and rectify them; it  is also able to provide retailers with the ability to gauge opportunity costs that are related to such issues. feedbk operates entirely on the retailcloud platform so it can provide operators with actionable analytics on how to increase units per transaction, identify ideal product mixes, and in general, identify their most valuable customers.

It’s just version 1.0, but we are excited about feedbk and the machine learning opportunities that come from it. We believe that it is the first of many pragmatic analytic solutions from our AI team that will allow small and mid size retailers to quickly access where their staff can best focus their efforts.

1. Embrace the data – Quality Data Will Replace Big Data , Have your POS data start working to provide you with information on lagging lines and to start matching product to customers more effectively.

2. Embrace the tech – The discussion has been resolved; Consumers do prefer shopping via mobile in store and out of the store. The POS has extended to the customer phone, and it’s easy for SMB to respond.

3. Embrace your online presence – Digital shopping can be a destination, and with the dropping cost of ecommerce, online insight to product and inventory is a must have.   

4. Embrace customer engagement – Reset your customer service culture, train associates to provide quality in-store engagement and use your customer preferences and inventory data to provide relevant engagement through social media.    

5. Don’t fear the unknown – It’s about a seamless customer journey. In store experiences and loyalty will get more relevant, the brick and mortar experience will become the secret weapon against big online.

6. Don’t fear payment providers – Payment solutions are becoming more competitive and innovative, the entry barriers to provide multiple payment options are being lowered as consumers demand more options.

7. Embrace Retail as a Service – It’s more than just carrying inventory and selling the product – customers expect more and suppliers want to do more. Endless aisle, pop-up stores within stores and customer preference data will all lead to a more curated retail experience for the consumer.

12 things that Liquor Stores look for in a POS System

Point of Sale Systems installed in liquor stores are an important tool to make sure operations runs smooth and seamless. Store managers have a great deal of responsibility to make sure that everything from catalog, inventory, and customer experience are handled flawlessly. As a software provider for numerous liquor stores across the country and talking to several business owners & store managers we have identified some of the most common aspects one should consider for a liquor store inventory management and point of sale system.

These 12 features are generally classified into  these functional areas.

1. Availability of a Global Catalog of Liquor Products

When a liquor store adopts a modern point of sale system, one of the challenges they have is how to load the product catalog. In some instances, the store hasn’t tracked products and inventory in the past, moving from a legacy cash register or simply starting a business from a buyout. A key problem in all of the above cases is lack of product tracking through an automated system. Retailcloud’s global catalog with over 50K liquor products allows an user to adopt the system seamlessly and get up and running in no time.

2. Keeping track of accurate inventory of products

It is not an easy job to track inventory for all the products when you have a busy season and when your focus should be to sell more. Retailcloud inventory management module tracks the products across your business right from issuing purchase orders , receiving into the stores and managing inventory automatically into your location when you sell. Every business owner we have talked to has mentioned that accurate inventory tracking is one of the top 3 priorities they have with a new point of sale system.

3. Ability to sell products by case, pack or individual items

With the variety of options within the liquor catalog management, one of the common struggles that liquor store managers have is how should they enter cases and packs into the system. Can I buy by the case and sell individually and get an accurate inventory? The solution to do this effectively is to have different units of measure available allowing for accurate reporting of inventory regardless of how you sell it.

4. Cash Discounting for customers

Cash discounting has been one of the most sought out features in recent times. This allows the business owner to manage the payment processing cost more effectively in creative ways. The retailcloud system allows merchants to setup cash discounts, rebates for certain payments types and print on receipts.

5. Cost & Profit management for products

Experts who advise liquor store operations says that the best way to have a profitable liquor store is to keep track of your profit goals. To effectively keep track of the profit it is important for a store to have tools to manage the cost of inventory and thus by reporting it back to you across your business. Many cost management systems do not provide accurate cost of good sold data. I have seen systems that update all items in inventory to the current cost price wreaking havoc on managing true cost of goods. A system which effectively calculate the weighted average cost and provide you with effective profit margins and KPI is very important. Retailcloud’s cost management and nGauge analytics platform provides these insights without additional plugins or 3rd party softwares.

6. Secure access for employees

Multiple employees are very common in liquor stores and having the tools to manage their sales as well as providing security against theft and abuse of the system . Have unique log ins and password/pin entry is a key necessity. Knowing which employee is ringing up the sale as well as limiting access for non key employees are among the features needed.

7. Roles based access for staff

As a business owner one of the challenges faced is the level or access which can be provided to different employees and temporary staff. Well defined roles in the system with commonly accessed features and ability to promote or demote certain function is very handy in liquor store multi employee situations. Retailcloud POS provides unlimited users access across 10 different roles.

8. Age & ID verification on pos for liquor & tobacco purchases.

Age and ID verifications are important when you have mix and match of a variety of products. Automated prompts of Age and ID verification allows the cashiers verify the customers for the ID based on product category or scan on the Code Scanner for programmable beeps.

9. Centralized Management of sales and profit reporting

Ability to access the reports anywhere is one thing which every system should have in the 21st century. The global access to Sales and Inventory reporting anywhere anytime is key for business owners to analyze their business / profit strategies at their own time.

10. Track customers with promotions and loyalty programs

Irrespective of any type of business, one thing retailers across the globe will agree on is that they need ways to engage with their customers. One of the most common ways to do this is offering promotions and loyalty programs. Starting with simple discounts which can be announced through your weekly mailer or reward your most visited customers with loyalty programs can be useful tools to ensure that your customers think of your business first.

11. Customer sales history and Club pricing

Customer engagement strategies varies from time to time. Purchase history and customer engagement drives those strategies. Ability to see the sales history and sales analysis helps businesses to better and more effectively engage with customers. VIP Clubs or Demographic based promotions are likely to improve the customer visits.

12. Employee Attendance tracking

Most liquor store staff interacts on POS one way or other. Without additional software or subscription, the business owners can track employee time within the POS which is a very useful way to track the attendance. Attendance can be monitored remotely or overridden by supervisors as needed.

Checkout out retailcloud’s Liquor Store Point of Sale Features list here to learn more

Let me start by says that a product return isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Based on a six-year study from the University of North Carolina’s Flagler Business School, the study looked at the return rates from various companies. And it turns out that there’s actually a “sweet spot” that equates to higher profits per customer sales. One company was found to have a magic number of 13 percent!

But a product return may not go the way merchants want. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, that same research showed numbers that were greater than this percentage actually decreased profits. And it signaled deeper, structural problems within the company itself. It could be a strict return policy or poor record keeping from accounting. Either way, these problems can lead to dissatisfied customers, increased chargebacks and much more.

I’d like to provide four simple tips that should help your business prevent excessive returns

Let customers  touch and feel your products

Allow your customers to fully experience your merchandise. Touching, Tasting, Feeling – your customers can make a more informed decision, which will minimize returns.

Market-right features

Many times such returns are the result of a retailer carrying a product that doesn’t have the features customers demand. They may still buy it, but the end result will typically be a return.

Listen to your Customers

The best way to find out what the customers want is to ask them. Salespeople will also have great insight as to what customers are asking for that a store isn’t carrying. Paying attention to the responses and acting on them will help minimize returned merchandise. Keeping tabs on the competition can also be useful.

Informative displays

“With tight payrolls and a large turnover of associates, displays are more important than ever before,” says Tom Hebrock, vice president of retail services at Stuart and Associates in Brentwood, Tenn. “This is what the customer relies on if they can’t get employee assistance in the store.”

Displays need to have consistent information for one type of product. The sign also needs to include accessories that are needed but not included so the customer doesn’t get home expecting what’s not there.

Informative displays will also help store personnel communicate the benefits and features of the products they are selling. While it would be nice for associates to memorize every feature of every product, the expectation is unrealistic, and detailed displays will assist them in selling.

Follow these tips to prevent excessive returns so that you can operate in the Sweet Spot of customer returns.

In retail location matters, and brick and mortar retailers spend a lot of time and resources in getting new customers to walk in their stores,  but that is just the beginning; keeping customers coming back is the key to operating a successful retail operation. Here are some tips on how to do that

Brand awareness

Let’s start here,  keep reminding them where they are – have associates greet them by using your store name “ Welcome to (store name);  Can I help you find something?” Remind them where they are whenever possible – Thank you for shopping at (store name); try to use shopping bags, digital receipts where your store name is prominently displayed. Whenever possible use preprinted hangtags or if you don’t want to invest in them – try a stamp or sticker with your name and logo.

Exceed expectations

Here is a low-cost value add for your customers, have associates be aware of surprising customers with random acts of kindness (I don’t mean give away free product or discounts) – taking time to carefully package items, spending a little more time to make sure the customer experience is curated for the customer.

Inventory transparency

Provide accurate information to the customer or product availability. Give associates the tools to know what’s in stock, what’s on the way in and when it can be expected.  Pay particular attention to your product mix and train your associates on complimentary and replacement product.

Value your relationships

Loyalty and club programs (especially experienced based ones) are the cornerstone of retail – Club programs can range from simple pricing discounts like grocery stores offer or experience-based ones that many airlines focus on. One of my favorite example of a club program is a neighborhood restaurant who has a point system for visits and once you get to a certain level – they guarantee you a table anytime – I’ve seen them set up temporarily set up tables for their top customers even when fully sold out – I’m sure that those customers feel the restaurant always value their relationship.

Last but by no means least

Get online

Consumers want easy access to their favorite stores, have an online site that has accurate information on products and inventory levels (ideally connected to your inventory system) and tied to your POS (so customers have one view into all their activity). This allows customers to view product, make purchases and even process returns at their convenience.

Keep the shopping process simple yet enriching is what will keep them coming back. Keep reminding the customer where they are (frequency of impression is real) and have your associates stay focused on providing a quality experience. These are some simple yet inexpensive ways in driving return activity.

To begin with – Get to really know your customer!

If you are using a POS management software like retailcloud, you can get an in-depth understanding of your customer preferences,  what their ideal product mix is, what their tendencies are, maybe even who their favorite employees are

Having this type of insight will allow you to create a more customer centric approach to your emails,  ultimately improving your conversion rates and allowing you to target your product mix more specifically for your customers.

Online retailers gather every bit of customer data, their clicks what they looked at what they bought and what they abandoned, this may overwhelm you if you are not collecting any data today but time is on your side- start with a 3 simple things to get you started

  1. Add a customer to each sale – this will allow you to ultimately generate reports on their preferences and give you insight to your MVC (Most Valuable Customers).
  2. Consider a loyalty or club program, reward customers for giving you’re their permission to track their sales – consider experience-based rewards (early access to new or sales products for example) or club pricing (there is a reason supermarkets with their low margins do it).
  3. Launch a connected ecommerce site that customers can see your products and inventory on hand, use it to for cross promotions (online and instore) and most importantly make sure you can see all the combined data in one view.

These are just basic steps, if you are already using your retail CRM and would like a more indepth discussion on how to use preference marketing to drive additional sales (especially add-ons) email me at jordan@retailcloud.com.

According to a recent infographic from Community Merchants USA, 66 percent of all point-of-sales (POS) transactions are done with plastic – credit, debit, or gift cards. As we all know, there are VISA/MC and association fees that must be paid by the retailers to accept credit cards. A major trend in many industries is to pass on the expense to the customer at the time of the sales transaction. Tacking a small percent onto each sale, can result in a significant savings for the business.

Are Cash Discounts right for you and your customers? Here are pros and cons that can help you decide.

PROS OF A CASH DISCOUNT PROGRAM

Reduce Fees – Obviously, the biggest pro is reducing or eliminating card processing fees associated with accepting credit cards. If you don’t process cards, you don’t have to pay for the service.  

Easier to implement and explain than a credit card surcharge  – Another way some merchants pay for card processing is to assess a surcharge on products bought with a credit card.  There is sometimes push back. For instance, it’s illegal to add a card processing surcharge in 11 states. Implementing a cash discount, though, is legal everywhere.  And it’s pretty easy to explain that all items in the store are priced with a built-in service fee, but that the fee is deducted if you pay with cash.

Encourages cash payments – Although many people prefer credit cards, a cash discount may encourage a customer to use cash instead of a card for their purchase. These means less time between the sale and when you have access to the funds. There is no processing time or wait period for cash in your hand.  Plus you eliminate some fraud exposure.

Reduce chargebacks  – With fewer people using cards in your store, it’s likely the number of chargebacks will also decrease. If this has been a problem for your business, this decrease may actually help reduce the card fees you do pay, because you’d be perceived as less of a risk.

CONS OF A CASH DISCOUNT PROGRAM

Some customers may not carry cash – Lots of people simply don’t carry cash anymore. Expecting to use ApplePay, some shop armed with just their phone. And if a customer is opposed to making a purchase without getting a discount, they may walk out without buying anything.  You could experience a drop in sales volume.

Conspicuous signage – To offer cash discounts, you must post what the law refers to as “conspicuous signage” throughout your place of business to let customers know they can receive a discount if they pay by cash or gift card rather than using a credit card. Also, while expressed as a discount and not as a fee, some customers may view the posted “offer” in a negative light.

Implementation – To be compliant with a cash discount program, your receipts must clearly reflect that there is a service charge on items and that that service charge was removed for a cash payment. That means revising your POS system software.  Plus you’ll want to be sure you follow any changes in the laws around cash discounts in the future to avoid any penalties.

Potential Drop in Sales  – Studies have show that consumers spend more when using their credit cards. If cash appears to be a more attractive option in terms of managing credit card processing fees, be aware that it could end up discouraging and depressing your overall sales results.

If you chose to implement a cash discount program, make sure you go into it with your eyes open. Follow the rules closely to avoid issues and penalties, and be sure to evaluate the success of the program against any declines in sales you may experience to be sure the program is working for you.

forrester

Is mobile an effective sales channel for retail?

Given that Forrester states consumers have spent $60 billion from mobile phones in 2016 alone and have influenced over $1 trillion dollars in brick and mortar sales, that question may have to be marked “Answered and Resolved!”

No doubt you have seen the various posts on the demise of bricks and mortar retail over the past few months; however, there are some conflicting stats.  Accenture surveyed nearly 10,000 consumers and found that while social media is the most preferred method of purchasing for millennials and post millennials, for 77% of them, bricks and mortar were preferred.

This being a generation that has spent their entire life depending on smartphones, its inevitable that devices play a key role in finding product, comparing prices, looking for reviews and promotions; so let’s look at the top things they are doing on their devices

Where brick and mortar retail excels is in its ability to provide superior brand engagement to consumers – there is a personal authentic experience that cannot be replicated in online sales; however, giving consumers transparency to the inventory and experience from their mobile devices is a key component of this process.

Gen Z consumers are typically looking to start the shopping experience before they even walk into the store, they want a high level of engagement on the store floor but a frictionless easy checkout process. Ideally, surveys show most of them would prefer checkout directly from the devices (Amazon & Walmart are already making inroads in this capability).

While online will continue to grow, I believe that traditional brick and mortars refusal to provide their consumers a mobile interaction channel is really what will ultimately be more of a detriment than the online boom. What their customers want is the ability to provide a high engagement experience that incorporates the online and offline experience in one seamless process. Mobile will continue to be the key in enabling that process

retailcrm

The fact that retail is no longer just about product is not a secret, that it is all about engagement is not a surprise, that customers expect a unified experience is natural; but how retailers should pivot and aggregate all this data into one view remains a mystery and keeps many small and mid sized operators up at night.  This has created a pressure on businesses to revisit their online strategies even those whose primary focus is their local market.

“It’s like watching an accident in slow motion, you know you got to do something but the question is what and how and for how much”

There are many sources of data to consider but let’s focus on a few simple yet meaningful places to start with. Before we get started, let’s talk a little bit about tracking or customer preferences; while no doubt most consumers do not want their every activity tracked and stored, they do not mind doing so if they can receive something of benefit and the data is stored securely. Think about how willingly we allow the cell providers to track our every movement so long as they know exactly where we are when we need directions.

To begin aggregating this data you need to start with a reliable CRM software. Ideally this is will be built into your POS application as that will solve the instore piece of it, assuming that it has the functionality of a CRM software.

In Store POS Activity

In Store POS sales activity is the easiest and simplest to do; does your POS provide robust segmentation so you can classify your products into departments and categories, as well as flexibility in creating item attributes (in apparel for example size, color, style, season, brand) and does it provide you with flexibility in creating customer groupings across all channels, so you can group customers based on initial channel of the relationship or other groupings. Remember that there has to be some benefit for a customer to provide you this detail and loyalty programs are the most common, however perhaps more effective has been club pricing (like in grocery stores) or access to premium experiences (like with airlines or hotels). As you design this pick the one that works best for you.  

Get our free “How to design your Loyalty program” ebook

Other benefits can be more lenient refund policy to know customers or  a more restrictive return policy to anonymous transactions.

Getting your store online with insight to up to date product availability will provide you with a trove of data;  encouraging customer to quickly register and login to get special pricing also rewards and encourages  customers for sharing their data with you.

Online Sales

Customer expect to connect with their favorite retailers on their terms; when they are available and from the devices of their choice. As a result retailers are experiencing a lot of pressure to deploy online stores; unfortunately too many do this as a reactionary move and not part of a strategic move.  

It is commonplace for customers to go to sites and get real time access to products and their availabilities from any device. Just think about the increase in “some product” stores near me searches in Google. Does your store appear with images that accurately represent the product and the quantities; as inventory is added or depleted from your POS system is your online store reflecting it.  Does your Retail CRM  aggregate customer and transactional data  no matter where it happens? Does it make it available to online and offline stores easily.

Sounds complicated but it’s not, in fact any POS, Cart and CRM solution that you are using should be able to do this as a matter of fact, without much work on your end.

Forecasting and Purchasing

It’s true that most small and mid-sized operators are not doing future planning beyond the next order; however your retail CRM should be able to generate reports based on classification and attributes to not just determine what to buy buy for whom to buy it for.

In retailcloud for example our Grow and Pro users can filter product to 3 classifications and 5 attributes to determine with a fair amount of accuracy who is likely to buy new product; or to include a discount modeling to see who is likely to buy overstocked product. Your retail crm should help you minimize your investment in inventory at a product level which should free up investment in complementary inventory to increase units per transactions. Having a CRM that just stores the data is pointless, how can you utilize the crm to create personalized offers to customers, and to plan stock levels to meet your customer needs.

Retail CRM is a must have for retailers today, it does more than just give you a historical perspective of your transactional data; it should establish the relationships between the variables that affect sales and revenue; such as product mix, availability, trends etc.

Ideally it should provide tools to drive revenue growth, such as identifying tailored upsell opportunities or other methods to increase units per transaction, while helping identifying ideal product mix using overstocked and understocked algorithms.  

Most crucially it should serve you all the information in a clear easy to digest and use manner , so all your operators have to do is act.

Do you feel like your POS resembles the ancient, bulky cash register from the early 2000s or do you have a tablet POS system that you installed two years ago that is not even able to show you customer purchase history? Do you feel like there could be a solution out there that can truly simplify the tasks of running your retail store? Now is the time to look into the advances that are now available and affordable for the small to mid-size shop.

Retailers today most likely do not want to stay late after closing, checking off what products have been sold that day on an excel sheet, or worse, by hand on a piece of paper. Switching to more efficient POS systems will help benefit your small business by not only making your life and your employees lives easier, but also contributing to higher profits and creating better customer satisfaction.

Not convinced? Well, here are some more reasons why you should keep your POS system updated:

  1. Managing inventory can be easier: Conducting stock counts on an excel sheet, or worse, by pen and paper is such a laborious task. Traditional cash registers are not equipped with the ability to keep track of your inventory levels in your store. However, with modern POS systems, there are certain applications that can help manage what products go in and out of your store in an instant. You will never run out of a customer favorite as you will always be in the loop of the demand that your store is experiencing. You can also find out which products are not high sellers and if you are overstocked or understocked on a certain item.
  2. Smartphones and tablets are the new trend: If you are still using that ancient cash register, it is definitely time to upgrade. As stated earlier, these POS systems are not highly built to provide the necessary information that you need after processing tons of transactions in a day. Also, these machines can hold up the customer line. Smartphones and tablets create an easier way to get through your line in just a couple minutes. You can have a customer sign up for a loyalty program in just a few seconds while also answering their questions using these new pieces of technology. In addition, smartphones and tablets can have tons more features and applications than that of a cash register. They are easily accessible and can be brought around anywhere in the store.
  3. More customer satisfaction: Customers today are growing to be more tech savvy than before. Customers as young as 15 years old and older are more than capable of making a purchase on a smartphone or tablet. These people are looking for a faster way to make their purchases as well as an easier way to find the product they need if they are buying online. If your customers are satisfied by the end of their purchase because of the quick way they were able to buy their product, then not only are they happy, but you are also. Your updated POS system can help create your brand image by fulfilling your customers’ needs which can lead them to leaving great reviews on your Yelp page!
  4. Analysis and data reports are available instantly: Receiving accurate data about your business is key, especially if you need to figure out different ways to better improve it. With the right POS system and software, you have access to a great outlook on your business right at your fingertips. There are certain applications, such as nGauge, that can help “monitor all your key metrics from sales and margin to stock days and inventory turnover.” These analysis and data report features can provide accurate statistics on how well your employees are doing as well as how well your products are selling. With all this information at hand, your business can improve immediately.

These are just a few of  multiple other reasons why you should update your POS system today. So, what are you waiting for? Go update your POS now!

We use cookies

This website uses cookies to improve your experience, analyze our traffic, and personalize our marketing. By continuing to use this website, you consent to the use of cookies.