Lines are a part of Christmas shopping, but customers will only put up with so much.  Accourding to a report from M/A/R/C Research, retailers should try to target four minutes as the maximum wait time, with customer satisfaction dropping steeply after that.  43% of customers said that long lines would affect their decision to shop a particular retailer in the future.  10% said they had left a store because of the line length without making their planned purchases.

Clearly, then, it's key to make certain that you are moving customers through your line quickly.  Make sure you have enough staff on hand - many stores hire seasonal workers for these positions.

One other way to reduce your transaction time is to use IP based payment processing.  One such solution is integrated into Extreme Point of Sale products - Mercury Payment Processing.  Processing within the system instead of via another terminal both adds speed and eliminates the need for a business phone line dedicated to credit card transactions.  Contact us today if you're interested in taking advantage of this feature.

Extreme Point of Sale products include a wide range of reporting tools.  How can you get the best use out of these?  Most of our users use the Detailed Daily Report for their main sales report, but what other analysis tools are there?

We suggest that if you're not using the sales analysis report, you try it out.  You can view sales by department, by hour, etc.  Look at the busy times for last year, so you can get an idea of staffing requirements.  See what types of items people were interested in, so you can keep them stocked.  Making sure you get every sale you can out of your retail space includes using all the tools you have.

 

During this busy season, it's easy to overlook your store's supplies and put off restocking them.  Don't fall in this trap - receipt paper and labels are among the items you need to be certain you have an adequate supply of, as running out during a busy day would be a disaster. 

Along those lines, we're running a special this month on receipt rolls and labels.  A case of 50 receipt rolls is $99.99 plus shipping.  Labels are $13.99 per roll, with a minimum order of 12 rolls.   You must mention this newsletter at time of order for this pricing.

How do you make certain your software is up-to-date?  Well, at the bottom of each newsletter, I include the current version number for all supported users, which you can compare to the updated version.  But what steps do you need to take to update?

1.  Enter Maintenance Manager.  Under the tools-> options menu, click change ESC Support username and password, and make certain they match the one sent to you via email.  These are case sensative.

2.  Go to tools, then download updates.  Follow through the prompts, clicking yes when asked about updating.

3.  After maintenance manager restarts, exit it and go into your main POS product.  Under tools, go to download updates and again go through the prompts.

You should now be up to date!