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Top 10 POS System Features and Benefits for Your Retail Business

December 21, 2022 by Multidev Technologies Leave a Comment

As the retail industry continues to grow, the demand for innovative technology that helps retailers to better manage their inventory has also increased. With the introduction of Point of Sale (POS) systems, businesses can reduce the risk of inventory shrinkage, reduce the number of employees needed to handle stock, and even increase the sale of their products.

The point of sale is the backbone of the retail business. If you want to be profitable, you must have an effective and efficient point-of-sale (POS) system. The following features and benefits of a POS system can help you run your retail business more efficiently.

10 Must-Have Features for Your Retail POS System

1. Customer Relationships and Loyalty Management

Customer relationships are the heart of a retail business. If you can’t manage your customer relationships well, you might as well hang up your retail hat. This is absolutely essential, from capturing personal data such as phone and mailing address to gathering information about past purchases; the more you know about each customer, the better you can manage that relationship. When your POS system has good customer relationship management tools, it’s much easier to offer a high level of personalized attention based on the customer’s purchase history. POS systems facilitate this level of personalization, making it easy to increase customer loyalty.

2. Omnichannel Integration and Management

Today’s retail environment is a multi-channel environment. It is vital for businesses to have both an in-store and online presence to optimize sales and profits. Shoppers often want to buy online and pick up their items in-store or check retailer websites to ensure that an item is in stock before visiting the store.

Your point-of-sale system needs to provide an omnichannel experience and online support to enhance your online presence and grow your business. These two capabilities work hand-in-hand, as online sales management provides the ability to regulate e-commerce effectively, while an omnichannel platform supports selling products wherever your customers are – in your physical stores, on offsite locations, on desktops, on mobile devices, and on social media.

3. Mobile Integration

Mobile POS system is an essential tool in retail, and many consumers are beginning to expect this option. Shoppers hate waiting in line, and a mobile checkout reduces that problem. A mobile POS system can help you with speedy checkout and accept contactless payments. Mobile POS can improve the customer experience by reducing wait times, optimizing space, and providing a real-time view of inventory.

4. Product Lookup

The ability to find products quickly will speed up your point-of-sale interactions. When a customer needs a product, your staff should be able to search for it by product name, vendor, SKU, or other parameters and deliver it quickly. Better yet, you can check it in on the spot while another employee retrieves it from the shelf.

5. Inventory Tracking and Management

Seamless inventory management is one of the best features of a POS system because it allows you to track inventory in real-time. By integrating retail business orders with in-store and online purchases, retailers can track their supply chains quickly and efficiently.

By monitoring inventory in real-time, retailers can save costs and reduce mistakes in placing orders with their suppliers. The sooner you have stocks uploaded to your POS system, the sooner you can sell online and offline.

6. Manage Your Promotions

Promotional rules management should be integrated into your POS system so that products ring up correctly at the cash register, bulk discounts are offered when necessary, and other specials do not hold your customers up when trying to get out of your store. If your POS system can handle promotions and discounts easily, you’ll have more flexibility in trying to measure marketing ideas.

7. Employee Management & Productivity Monitoring

Employee management and productivity monitoring features are available in most POS systems. For example, tracking work activity, sales, transactions per hour, and performance. If you pay your employees productivity bonuses or sales commissions, you need to track that at the POS. A good POS system will include this capability as a core function.

8. Wide Choice of Payment Options

Go beyond traditional modes of payment like cash and credit cards. Look for a point-of-sale that allows you to accept mobile payments. You can also split payments or accept multiple forms of payment per transaction. Customers may want to pay partially with a gift card or split payments between cash and credit. This should be easy for everyone and never hold up your line.

9. Consistent and Customizable Reports

You’ll need a POS system with the right analytics for your business, as the depth of reporting varies. Looking for basic metrics like sales per hour or inventory management? Choose a system that offers customizable reports with the ability to filter data by date range and other factors. In addition to allowing, you to customize the presentation of data, you can also schedule automatic email reports.

A point-of-sale system allows you to have various types of reports, such as sales reports, accounting reports, employee management reports, inventory reports, store comparison reports, and general reports.

10. Multi-Store Management

POS systems allow you to manage multiple stores within the same software. You can manage your data and optimize inventory for each store with a POS system that manages multiple stores, like ChainDrive POS software. With multi-store management, each store type can be customized to meet your needs and managed from a central location.

Benefits of Retail POS Software

Retail point-of-sale systems offer retailers many benefits beyond just transaction processing. Some of these benefits include:

Sales analysis and reporting: Giving retailers insight into their sales, allowing them to make informed decisions that strengthen their business.
Easy order management and inventory tracking: Automates inventory control and helps retailers determine optimal quantities of best-selling products and when to reorder. Advanced tools place orders for you and highlight sales trends. A point-of-sale system also helps reduce excess inventory by tracking what sells and what doesn’t.
Customer management capabilities: Automatically collect and track valuable customer information so retailers can build stronger relationships and encourage loyalty.
Faster checkout: Whether you sell online or in-store, fast checkout is crucial. Long lines cause customer frustration, and cumbersome online checkouts lead to cart abandonment. A point-of-sale system can help avoid these scenarios, as point-of-sale terminals are typically faster than cash registers at processing payments and can accept multiple payment methods.
Grow your business: POS solutions can provide retailers with key information and insights into their business. Based on this information, the scale can identify the best-selling products and the most valuable customers.
Improve efficiency: POS systems allow store owners and managers to spend more time training employees and interacting with customers through operational efficiency and automation.
Enhanced data security: It is your responsibility to protect your customers’ payment data. By using the ChainDrive POS system, you don’t have to worry about server security because your data is stored securely in the centralized database.

Choose the Right POS System for Your Retail Business

Reviewing the POS system features above can give you an idea of which solutions are right for your stores. Use this knowledge to build a list of your top choices, then contact software providers to see if they can offer more information.

All of these features are part of the ChainDrive retail management system, which helps retailers focus on growing their business. ChainDrive is a robust ERP system that is flexible and customizable to meet your specific needs. ChainDrive has a strong inventory management module and payment gateway integration. If you would like to know how it works and how it can help your business, schedule a demo at your convenience. We’ll be happy to explain everything and answer all your queries.

7 Ways CRM Software Helps Retail Businesses Drive More Sales

February 25, 2022 by Multidev Technologies Leave a Comment

Retail customers can make or break your business. A huge surge in COVID-19 omicron variant cases has led to drastic shifts in consumer behavior and created new uncertainty across the world. To succeed and improve customer experience in 2022 and beyond, brands need to adopt a CRM software for round-the-clock omnichannel support.

CRM system plays a vital role at every stage of the retail sales and marketing process. CRM software increases efficiency throughout the retail operations from lead generation to lead categorization, nurturing, email & SMS communication, sales force automation to follow-ups, etc.

Here Are 7 Ways CRM Software Helps You Grow Your Business

1. Faster Access to Customer Data

As your retail store starts dealing with more customers, you might need access to larger storage space in the backend. The most significant factor contributing to this is a CRM solution that helps retailers to access their database from any location in real-time. So, in case, you signed up a customer a long time back, you would never lose their critical information.

2. Increase Productivity with Mobile CRM

Retailers could improve their sales team’s productivity by using omnichannel CRM software. Modern-day CRM solutions are available for mobile phones. So even if your executives are not at their workstation, they can reach a customer by simply log-on to the designated mobile app.

3. Increase Customer Retention with CRM Solutions

CRM software solutions lead the race to IT investment, and most organizations increase their IT spending compared to the previous years. Most of this is related to customer-facing products that directly impact customer retention rates. Few of these products include a dedicated help desk, self-help portals, and many more. Here are some ways how CRM Software helps in retention

Automation
Data Storage and Retrieval
Targeted Offers and Promotions
Campaign Management
Customer Feedback

So, CRM software is an ideal solution for all tasks related to customer relationship management.

4. Deliver a Personalized Marketing Experience

Personalized customer experience is essential for the long run of your business. The way your business reaches your customer can either make them your loyal customer or break them from sign-up your services ever again. In order to provide personalized services, email marketing is the most efficient way to reach your customers. As for every dollar spent, you can boost your ROI. Using CRM software like ChainDrive can help you grow your email marketing and send emails that describe your brand’s success in the best way possible.

5. CRM Software Promotes Collaboration

The majority of sales executives agreed that CRM software helps them track their activities. They can effectively see the status of various sales currently in progress and even inform their teammates about any changes. Thus, CRM increases employees’ collaboration for smooth and effective retail operations.

6. Streamlining the Entire Sales Cycle

Experts say that more than 50% of the sales team’s productivity increased with CRM software. Customer management software can manage your entire sales cycle from generating leads until the customer is successfully onboarded.

The automated processes of customer relationship management software ensure that each stage of your sales cycle gets completed at a faster pace.

7. Increase Revenue Per Sales Representative

Most businesses concurred that their customers were unsure how their services differed from the competitors. So, retailers opt for customer relationship management software to drastically better their fortunes. CRM software helps retailers understand customers’ expectations from your product or service and implement changes accordingly.

Dedicate each customer the time they deserve; when your data storage is sorted, you can focus on managing existing customers as well as contacting leads on time.

Grow Your Retail Business with ChainDrive CRM software

ChainDrive CRM provides a complete range of automated solutions for marketing and sales processes. It builds stronger relationships by providing a complete picture of all customer interactions, tracking sales, organizing and prioritizing opportunities, and facilitating collaboration among various teams. This CRM tools can assist users with better lead generation, sophisticated retail analytics with in-built business intelligence (BI), and establishing a better customer relationship.

ChainDrive gives retailers more time to create winning sales strategies by automating most retail processes. ChainDrive allows you to manage your entire database to build your own custom logic to helps nurture and react to your audience in real-time. It enables you to increase your customer engagement and easily manage your sales pipelines. If you’re on the fence about adopting a CRM software, request a courtesy demo with one of our software experts.

10 Smart Ways to Attract Customers to Your Retail Store

September 14, 2021 by Multidev Technologies Leave a Comment

While e-commerce is expected to grow dramatically in 2021, most consumers still prefer to shop in stores. Some buyers like the in-store shopping experience because they can physically view and feel the item they wish to buy before purchasing. According to projections, internet sales will exceed $645 billion in 2021, meaning that retail establishments that rely only on foot visitors will miss out on significant sales.

You must strike a balance between internet sales and foot traffic to avoid being left behind. The use of a CRM management solution can help you shift the balances in your favor. It will support you in your day-to-day tasks and help you attain your goals without costing a fortune.

As a retailer, you know that having more consumers in your store means more opportunities to boost sales and build personal relationships with customers, resulting in a higher bottom line and a healthier business.

Here are the 10 best ways to attract customers to your retail store

1. Increase appeal of your in-store design

Another strategy to enhance that percentage is to increase the appeal of your retail business. Like an online user who doesn’t want to buy from a website that’s difficult to navigate, local shoppers won’t want to enter the shop unless they feel comfortable and easy to find. Do some visual merchandising.

Give your store new and relevant reasons for checking. This can be done by integrating fashionable and seasonal aspects into the displays. Keep your windows basic to make your passengers tourists, on the brand, and intriguing. Display your most appealing things. There is enough signage to make it easy to find. It is well-lit and appears to be open. Is the outside clean? Take care of the trash cans and walkways in the area.

2. Build community hub

Encourage your employees to engage in customer interaction. show them how to have more meaningful interactions with your consumers. Run functions that bring people together as another approach to integrating more socialization into your store. Fashion displays and the occasional in-store party can assist in increasing foot traffic.

It’s critical to provide a unified and high-quality shopping experience that combines digital and in-store elements. Building an online community of followers through curated content will offer dimension to the brand beyond bricks and mortar, allowing it to alter perceptions, anchor itself to specific attributes, influence spending, and establish common ground.

3. Invite strategic partnerships and Influencers

Finding partners with similar markets and brand synergies might help you leverage your business and grow your consumer base.

Many successful start-ups have relied on strategic alliances for two reasons: complementary skill sets and a collaborative attitude. A successful customer relationship can provide you with market knowledge, more leads, and increased customer value or appeal. The best collaborations make both sides feel like winners, and the trick is finding the proper match.

It’s not easy to get people to come through the door, and sometimes you may need to hire outside help. Any experts or influencers are welcome to visit your shop. You may give a discussion or teach a lesson in collaboration with a local celebrity.

4. Improve Customer Loyalty

In your retail business, you may use the loyalty program to gain insight into your customers’ actions and use the data to improve and personalize messaging, products, and offers. Your best salespeople will know how to make customers feel unique in-store, including addressing them by their first name.

After purchasing, ask for feedback using automated feedback forms or surveys to learn what customers think before telling others.

Regularly communicate with customers– use social media and email marketing to reach out to them.

Create a loyalty program – customers are more likely to shop at stores that provide a rewards program.

Provide gift customization -Customers who wish to buy something special for their loved ones may be drawn to stores that provide gift personalization options.

5. In-store experience and feeling of exclusivity

You might be missing out if your in-store experience doesn’t engage all five senses. Creating a multi-sensory environment improves the buyer’s journey, which leads to improved sales. People place a different value on things based on how prevalent they believe they are. The more valuable a product, service, or opportunity appears to be, the rarer it is. To elicit a sense of scarcity, make it clear in your stores or on your eCommerce site that items are only accessible for a limited time and that certain products soon go off the shelves.

6. Make use of one-to-one interactions.

While much has changed in the retail industry, one thing remained the same: the consumer experience can make or break your business. So interact with your customers to elicit their emotions. Strong emotional messages are easier to remember and more effective than intellectual messages.

If you utilize the same vocabulary and body language as your clients when talking to them, you’ll improve the chances of buying from you. We have a stronger affinity for persons who are similar to us because of the “mirroring effect.” Encourage social sharing and location tagging by creating social sharing possibilities within your store. Displaying a branded hashtag and your store is a simple method to do this.

7. Revamp online presence

For retailers who wish to increase sales, cross-selling and up-selling are essential. Having a continuous supply of consumers, on the other hand, is as crucial. Here’s how you can accomplish it:

1. Buy online, pick up in-store– Allowing customers to pick up their orders in-store relieves stress and helps your store compete with other e-commerce stores that don’t have a physical location.

2. Match online prices – instead, provide a complementary warranty, customer service, or a 30-day money-back guarantee. Whatever you choose to offer, be sure it is more valuable than the money your consumers would save if they bought your goods from a competitor’s website online.

3. Make inventory information available online – One of the most crucial reasons for your store to be omnichannel is because on-the-fence customers won’t visit unless they’re sure the item they want will be available. They also don’t want to be held on hold while your employees check. Give your consumers the option of receiving an SMS when an item is back in stock!

4. Use text messaging to send out promos – SMS remarketing, social media ads, and other channels are all options for retargeting. Retargeting advertising is a good option if your retail organization uses an omnichannel strategy. Create a VIP text message list for your store and send out infrequent texts to customers offering them a discount if they come in to shop.

5. Optimize your website for local searches – Your retail store must make every effort to appear in online searches.

Here are some ideas for making your website more local search-friendly:

Look up local directories and submit a request to be included.
Make contact with local bloggers and ask if they’d be willing to write about your company.
On Google My Business, double-check that your name, phone number, and address are correct.
Complete your profile with current images of the inside and outside of your store while you’re at it.
Add a Call/Text button to your website.
Customers should be asked to leave a review on your Google listing by sending an email or text message.
React to both positive and negative feedback.

8. Multipurpose retail space

The combination of retail and café experiences attracts new customers who would not ordinarily visit your store. Repurposing a section of your store to open a café or even a restaurant provides potential for community building.

Workshops and classes can be a source of extra income if you charge admission fees, but they’re also a great opportunity to engage with your current clients and attract new ones.

Run functions that bring people together as another strategy to increase socializing in your store. Fashion displays and the occasional in-store party can help boost foot traffic. Another popular method is for merchants to host regular yoga classes in their stores.

9. Traditional advertising

Consumers have gone online, and this has radically altered how firms communicate with their customers. Traditional advertising, such as print, radio, television, and billboards, is still one of the most effective ways to acquire new clients.

10. Honing your employee’s skills

Experiment with new ideas; invest in training, whether it’s a course or a business coach, so they can stay accountable, hone their abilities, and try new approaches. Managers must ensure that their staff understands meeting clients, connecting with them, providing products efficiently, and closing sales.

The following are some examples of formal training and onboarding features that might assist store owners:

POS training -so that new hires can pick up the computer system fast.
Customer service training is essential.
Checking for falsified currency
Training for daily operations and stock/visual merchandising
What can you do to assist clients who are browsing?
Training on health and safety.

Pay attention to what reshapes the business environment and puts in place initiatives to acquire new customers. What are you doing to make the market stand out?

The retail brick and mortar changes, but soon is not gone. Your organization has to take an omnichannel approach and give a moving in-store survival experience. We hope you have received beneficial advice from this post to assist you in developing your client base. You can also optimize everyday operations, easily and rapidly educate and onboard new staff, and adopt new solutions that will take your retail business to the next level by using CRM software like ChainDrive

Top 10 Retail Customer Service Best Practices and How to Implement Them in Your Stores

September 2, 2021 by Multidev Technologies Leave a Comment

Good customer service is prompt, efficient, and convenient to satisfy your clients’ requirements. This might involve retail customer recall and appreciation, establishing a local relationship with consumers, using your product expertise effectively, and more.

Customer management tools, reporting, and insights on sales, commercialization, and customer service activities provide the best retail systems. However, many elements may influence store experience, such as items, pricing, the ambiance in shops, etc. One of the main elements affecting how customers see their brand will always be customer service.

What is customer service skills in retail?

In the retail industry, customer service skills include interacting with people, solving problems, exhibiting patience and understanding, ensuring client pleasure, and handling consumer concerns. Employees that thrive at customer service may make a significant difference to a company’s bottom line.

Here are the top 10 good customer service skills for your employees

1. You can engage your consumers successfully via any channel – at the time of sale, your customer commitment begins. Are you making use of the opportunity to acquire the right information from your clients and then to use it responsibly? You don’t have to be able to communicate with each consumer on every accessible channel. Every consumer has to be engaged via its chosen channels.

Each new client receives a personalized video greeting from an online retailer. Come up with unique methods to greet new consumers. Examine what your opponents are doing to attract new consumers and make sure that your strategy is good.

2. Your retail client needs loyalty – at the greatest pricing and with the most satisfactory service, your retail clients want the best items. Don’t you give them what they want? Repeat clients are remembered and appreciated by the shop owner. Utilize a CRM software tools that allows you to keep track of customer information and use that information to serve customers better.

3. Connect with your customer through the right channel and time -Some of your clients want to conduct business with you in your brick-and-mortar locations, so you engage with them through the proper media at the correct times. Others are interested in purchasing from your website, connecting with you on Facebook or Youtube. Find out where your consumers are and how they want to interact with you, and then meet them there.

The online business proactively addresses shipping problems. When you sell online, develop a system that allows you to keep an eye on client orders and delivery. If something goes badly, stay ahead by approaching shoppers proactively rather than waiting for them to contact you.

4. Promote the right product to the right consumer at the right time – If you keep track of what each customer purchases, advertising the right products to the right customers will be a breeze.

The retailer who figures out how to avoid stockouts- While avoiding out-of-stocks is the best way to cope with them, and you can transform an uneasy stocking scenario into a good one with the proper customer service. Have a stockout backup scheme; if the product is not available, ensure that you have a better reaction and are always willing to offer alternatives so that you will not lose the sale. Provide shipping from your warehouse; You may also provide a free delivery service if you buy a product from another place or channel.

5. Reward your most loyal consumers- Loyalty programs work. You may encourage your most loyal consumers to return to your shop by rewarding them. If you don’t take care of it, you’ll be sorry.

The retail worker who understands his customer’s shopping habits.Be more aware of the individuals in your shop, especially if they regularly shop with you. Learn their routines and top purchases and if anything looks wrong, check if you can do anything to ensure that your customers have the experience. ChainDrive, a robust customer relationship management software, can do wonders here

6. Retain your consumers – It all comes down to loyalty. Customers will be loyal to you if you are loyal to them. Capture client information, collect statistics on their purchasing habits, promote the appropriate goods at the right pricing, and inspire them to spend more with a well-managed loyalty program that rewards them for being your customer.

Employees can go out of their way to make a customer happy-Keep an eye out for customers who aren’t having the finest day – find a method to cheer them up as long as they aren’t rude or disrespectful.

The retailer who offers apologizes sincerely- Prepare an apology and Make it up to the consumer. Even if the situation isn’t entirely your fault, apologizing for a customer’s troubles may go a long way. If you made a mistake, try your best to own up to it and make it up to the client. Is it possible to undo the mistake? Can you instead provide a discount?

7. The cashier establishes a local relationship with customers– It is not always necessary to force a sale. Don’t merely chat with a customer for the sake of making money off of them. Do it to establish a relationship. Keep an eye out for similarities. Find a way to engage with consumers through shared interests. Use those points of commonality to initiate a discussion.

8. The salesperson who takes the time to find the right fit – Collaborate with customers to identify the best product by making an extra effort to assist your clients who are in need. Depending on your shop, this might indicate a variety of things. But be careful to read your consumers correctly. To be clear, not every client needs an associate to tour them around the shop; but, for those customers who do want assistance, do your best to assist them in finding what they require.

9. Train your Employees – to upsell and cross-sell and ensure that they educate customers. It’s not only about pushing items when it comes to upselling or cross-selling. Make sure customers understand the benefits of the products you’re selling and why they should buy them.

The employee who comes up with an ideal greeting- Make a great first impression on your consumers by coming up with a strong greeting. Avoid generic messages like “Can I help you?” Instead, personalize your greeting or take the chance to assist and learn more about them.

10. The salesperson who puts her product expertise to serve customers better

Because product knowledge is an integral part of customer service, you and your employees must always be up to date on your products and catalog data. This is useful for when you’re:

When it comes to your best-sellers,
comparing and contrasting the characteristics and benefits of various products
Educating customers on how to utilize a product

Use the FAB method: The FAB formula (Features, Advantages, and Benefits) makes it easy for you and your colleagues to recall what each product is all about. Recognize your best-sellers – Get to know your product trends and best-sellers so you can always propose something useful.

Choose ChainDrive retail management system with comprehensive product reporting features to make things easier. The robust retail systems give you information that you can use to improve your sales, marketing, and customer service.

ChainDrive Retail CRM collects essential consumer data that helps you to spot patterns and trends in purchasing behaviors, buying habits, and practices. This retail knowledge enables you to provide customized service, create targeted marketing efforts, and make better pricing and promotion decisions, all of which contribute to higher sales, loyalty, and retention. If you want to scale up your retail stores or get a customized CRM tool for your retail business, Request a free online demo to talk to an industry expert.