Good communications can save 36 hours a week at the checkout
Survey suggests that retail stores can save 36 hours every week at the checkouts with a good communications system to speed up responses to customer queries and supervisor requests.
“It is easy for the checkouts to become a bottleneck. Price queries, age related authorisations even requests for more baskets and change can significantly slow down service at the till as operators regularly have to wait for a supervisor response or holler at colleagues across the shop floor to grab their attention and ask for help which looks unprofessional and holds up the queue,” says Tom Downes, CEO of Quail Digital.
A good push button messaging system which instantly sends specific requests direct to a team of supervisors who can then respond immediately, reduces the response time from an average of two minutes down to just 40 seconds the audit revealed.
Quail Digital undertook a before and after audit of 120 stores which had installed a wireless headset system linking staff and enabling them to communicate instantly. An impressive 85% of store managers believed the system improved customer service and also sped up the scan and throughput of customers at the tills.
A recent survey from Barclays Bank and Barclaycard revealed that store staff had less than a minute to answer queries on the shop floor before customers were ready to leave and 51% of customers would not even enter a shop if they saw the queues were long. A headset system connecting staff enables those on the shop floor to swiftly find the right person to answer customer queries.
“Often customers are left hanging around whilst staff try to find someone to deal with a query or they have to wander around aimlessly trying to find someone to speak to. These days it does not take long for customers to get frustrated and leave and stores cannot afford to lose custom in this way,” added Tom.
