Waitrose progresses its point-of-sale capability
Waitrose is continuing to develop its payment capabilities, with a more agile technology infrastructure enabling it to introduce an increasing level of mobility and personalisation into its store-based solutions.
The supermarket chain recently launched its Quick Check app that runs alongside the Quick Check hand-held scanners in-store that enable shoppers to build their baskets as they shop and then simply present a code at the till for payment.
At Retail’s Big Show, organised by the NRF, Matt Clifton, head of change at Waitrose, says the next stages – that are in development – are to personalise the engagement with customers and to also incorporate payments into the app.
Such activities are being made possible by its single underlying point-of-sale solution that has been created through it working with UK-based provider PCMS. “We’d have previously had an ecommerce PoS and a store POS and we’d try to keep them aligned. But now we have one PoS that involves surfacing the same information – including pricing and inventory – into the store tills, Quick Check and the store pickers’ devices,” says Clifton.
The data is also surfaced onto the mobile PoS devices that are used in Waitrose’s restaurants. This very much fits into the narrative of clientelling. Since Waitrose and sister company John Lewis continues to pride itself on the level of service it gives, the ability to increasingly surface data onto PoS for clientelling purposes is particularly powerful.
The next step in the evolution of the PoS will be to send promotions to customers and to then move onto personalising these interactions based on shopper behaviour as well as other data points. There is also the prospect of adding payment functionality to the Quick Check app.
To date Clifton has been reluctant to undertake such action because of the issue of needing authorisation on things like the purchase of alcohol. To this end Waitrose has been looking at age verification solutions that could be incorporated into the app.
“The types of shopper in our stores can’t be faced with these issues. For me I want a real seamless journey for our customers,” he says, adding that in its current form Quick Check has proved very popular with some of Waitrose’s key customers. Although it represents only 6% of transactions it is a much higher figure in terms of value because the “vast majority” of the people that use it are the company’s most profitable customers.
