The better the customer experience, the more pressure on the point-of-sale

There’s no shortage of key metrics to track the financial success of retail operations: total sales or revenue, margin, percentage of sales split between bricks-and-mortar and ecommerce operations, basket size and basket value to name but a few.

Downward trends on any of these key metrics, or conversely a desire to commence or continue with a general upward trajectory, may drive retailers to initiate improvement programmes. These often lead to more focus on the customer: creating better conditions to serve the needs of customers and more delightful experiences. For example, by personalising marketing efforts to better engage customers, both in-store and online.

The more sophisticated the underlying engagements that capture and serve customer needs and desires become, the more complex the point of purchase becomes. The final point-of-sale now serves as the moment in time when campaigns, discounts, rewards, payments and lifecycle initiatives all have to work together seamlessly to create a final, purchase experience that’s fast, accurate, and delightful. This is certainly true for online shopping but it’s true for the physical retail experience as well. There’s a lot that can go wrong, especially if the performance of any of these technologies becomes degraded.

That’s precisely why leading retailers are starting to emphasise and focus more on the actual transaction experience - rounding out optimisation of the full end-to-end customer value chain.

All the small things

To complete an in-store transaction, a lot needs to happen.

The items need to be scanned in at the point-of-sale. A customer may also scan their loyalty app or card before progressing to payment, which links up to another system. That same system may be asked more ‘questions,’ if the customer seeks to use loyalty points earned on previous purchases on their current transaction.

The customer may have a discount offer from email or social media, which must be scanned and checked against a record in a backend marketing system. Once discounts are applied, there has to be a system to complete payment - this usually involves the use of a third-party operated payment terminal and software. This runs its own checks with banking systems on-the-spot to ensure the customer has sufficient funds (or credit) to complete the purchase, and if so, to reflect that in the retailer’s bank account. Multiple systems may be used to accept different types of payments, such as QR codes, contactless/digital cards, plastic credit cards or potentially even cash. This all needs to take place seamlessly.

Online, retailers have a matter of seconds to complete the transaction, or risk an abandoned basket. More leeway may be afforded in a physical retail environment, but slow transaction experiences are in some ways even more painful in-person. Many people have likely experienced queuing where the customer at the point-of-sale is having problems with a payment going through, or with the system recognising their loyalty app.

Each small delay adds friction to the overall transaction process, and can quickly destroy the good work and goodwill gained from the lead-up work culminating in the purchase decision. Personalised marketing and in-store engagement will be quickly forgotten if it is too slow or difficult to check out.

An optimised experience

The flashpoint is that as retailers keep adding in more technology-driven capabilities and features in a bid to differentiate themselves - accepting more payment services, for example - the point-of-sale process can become convoluted.

When introducing new capabilities, even small ones, it can have a noticeable impact on processing time. These seconds can add up quickly, causing valuable time spent on waiting for tasks to be completed. By being mindful of the capabilities that are added, it’s possible to help ensure that processes remain efficient and effective. For retailers, it is important to avoid introducing too much complexity and too many API or network-based calls to internal and third-party systems while pursuing differentiation and service quality.

The quality of an end-to-end experience depends on the reliability and performance of its weakest component or system. Such a weak link can cause a transaction process to become degraded or out of service, or cause temporary failure in the local infrastructure of a payment service. This would require payments to run on a different set of rails, which raises questions about the impact on transaction processing time and the overall customer experience. Will it still be within customer expectations, or will it cause excessive queuing and leave them stranded at the point-of-sale?

Delivering great customer experience is non-negotiable. It is only by being able to visualise all the pieces in the end-to-end service delivery chain that retailers can find the best ways to proactively reduce complexity or points of friction, and make an informed decision about what to do when one of the pieces is under-performing, or enters a degraded or outage state. The point-of-sale is a moment to delight—both online and in-store.