We live in an era where technology is constantly improving – becoming easier and quicker to use. Your POS system should not be performing like one from the 1990s, wasting both your employees’ and your customers’ time.
Tell-tale signs that your POS system is less than ideal:
- The training process for new employees is longer than it needs to be.
- The checkout process takes minutes, rather than seconds.
- Employees often have to ask managers to perform voids or fix system errors.
- You frequently experience technical difficulties, like a frozen screen.
- Employees sigh, groan or seem reluctant when they are told to checkout customers.
- Customers have complained about slow-moving lines.
Here’s why your employees hate using your POS system:
1. Slow receipt printing
Thirty seconds doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you have the customer staring at you, waiting for their receipt to print it can feel like a lifetime. Same goes for waiting for a credit card to process.
A slow POS system reflects poorly on your cashiers, affecting the employee-customer relationship. Customers can become frustrated with your employees as a result of a slow-moving checkout process – especially in drive-thru settings and other fast-paced restaurant environments where customers expect to get in and out quickly. After all, slow checkout time could be the reason that they are late to work or an important function. In turn, your employees will become frustrated with your POS system and possibly even the job as a whole.
2. Unreliable payment processing
If credit cards are often declined, must be swiped several times to process correctly or if card numbers must be manually entered, then it’s safe to say that you have an unreliable POS system. Ultimately, your customers should not have to worry whether or not:
- Their card is active and their account has money in it.
- Their purchase went through.
- Their credit card information is secure.
- They weren’t charged multiple times for the same items.
When these glitches happen, lines move much more slowly. This is often because employees must process the same payment several times, customers must search their wallet for another method of payment, or worse – customers have several questions or complaints regarding the safety of their card. Overall, unreliable payment processing compromises your restaurant’s customer service is compromised.
3. Persnickety interface
Do your employees complain about your touch screen interface? Is it easy to use? Here are some factors that can affect your employee’s speed and performance:
- Resistance – Your buttons should be easy to touch and select. Employees should not have to press hard to ring up an item. They should also not be able to select an item by lightly running their finger across the screen. Both of these extremes can cause errors, like ringing up an incorrect amount of items.
- Lag – Each selection should appear on the list of order items immediately after your employee touches the button. If your interface lags for a few seconds before registering a selection, the employee could become frustrated and press the button several times – inevitably causing them to go back and delete the extra items. Also, “lag” in the form of a frozen screen will waste a ton of your time.
Make sure your touch screen terminal is easy to use and learn so that your employees are able to do their job quickly and correctly, with minimal disruption to their flow of customers.
Think of it this way: today’s smartphone users are typing on a touch screen keyboard with auto correct – they don’t want to go back to the flip phone days (pressing a key four times just to type one letter). Be honest: is your POS system the equivalent of a flip phone in a smartphone world?
