How POS Can Enhance Your Customer Service Strategy

When you hear “POS system”, you probably don’t think of customer service, but instead, think of payment processing and maybe inventory management. The fact is, a POS system is actually an excellent tool for enhancing your customer service strategy and bridging the gap between you and your customers.

Whether you’re sending out promotions, tracking customer purchase history, or collecting personal information, your POS system acts as a hub for all of your customer and business activity.

With this valuable information, you can work to make your customer service an item of envy for the competition. Here’s how POS can enhance your customer service strategy.

Data

Your POS system can actually collect mountains of useful data on your business and customer activity, and make no mistake; information is your business’s greatest and most abundant resource. The more you know about your business, your customers, and every aspect of your customer service strategy, the more you can fine-tune things to better serve the customers.

Data is a resource that not every business takes seriously, and it shows in their customer service. Have you ever been to a store that’s received multiple complaints about the same thing, and yet that complaint remains unresolved?

This is a classic example of a business ignoring data, and that’s something a business of any size can’t afford to do.

The best POS software on the market organizes your data into customizable graphs and charts that you can either share digitally or print off/save. You can compare sales trends and hourly sales from last year, last month, or even yesterday.

You’ll make better staffing decisions, better promotional periods, and have a better overall awareness of how your business functions on a daily basis.

Organization

Is your inventory inorganized or inaccurate? Are you struggling to fill customer orders because you don’t know where anything is? No problem! Your POS system can handle this and help you get your business (and your inventory) organized.

Customers can tell when a business is unorganized. It runs less smoothly, orders take longer to fulfill, and no one seems to know what’s going on. This doesn’t do anything for the customer except upset them and maximize the chance that they’ll never come back.

With a POS system, you’ll be able to better serve your customers with a detailed and organized product or service catalog that you can access from anywhere (if you’re using cloud-based POS software).

Your inventory will be managed in real-time, so you’ll always know what products are available to customers, and your website and in-store inventory will always be accurate in relation to one another.

Customer Information

Knowing your customers is half the battle in customer service…okay, it’s more like ninety percent of the battle in customer service. The bottom line is that it’s crucial to a successful customer service experience, and customers appreciate it when you take the time to get to know and understand them.

A POS system will allow you to not only collect personal information on your customers but you can also track what they’re buying in your store. When you begin sending out promotions, wouldn’t you want to send discounts that are specifically tailored to that particular customer’s needs?

For instance, if a customer only purchases Item A at your store, you don’t want to send a generalized coupon, you want to send them a discount for Item A to maximize the chance that they’ll come into the store to use it!

A customer that feels like business really knows them is much more likely to remain loyal to that business and continue to shop there. It’s also easier to cater to a customer’s needs when you know beforehand what products they’re likely looking for.

Tracking Purchases

Do you have products that don’t really leave the shelves? It might be time to ax them, but first, take a look at your POS system. You can track sales trends on a per-item basis, as well as on a per-customer basis to see if those products are favorited by any of your customers.

This will help you make a tough decision on whether or not to continue stocking them.

You might find that instead of axing a product, you just need to order fewer units per month if only a few customers are purchasing them. Basing your decisions around the needs of the customer is how you achieve excellence in the customer service sector, and that can set your business apart significantly from the competition.

The Bottom Line

Good customer service isn’t just about serving the customers; it’s about having the right tools to help you maximize your interactions and make the most of your data. POS systems can collect and organize that data so you can use it later on, and will help bridge the gap between you and your customers for a more personalized relationship.