How a Mobile POS Can Drive Employee Satisfaction (and Retention)
Posted by Amanda McLaughlin on Nov 10, 2022
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Retail has been particularly hard to work in over the past few years. Factors well beyond anyone’s control have been causing customers to be more frustrated than usual, leaving employees with a lot to navigate – and as a result, a lot of resignations. In fact, in summer 2022, retail employee turnover rates hit close to 60%.
It’s no isolated incident. Unfortunately, retail employee churn is four times higher than all other industries, and it costs businesses around 50% of an entry-level employee’s salary to replace them. This costs retailers more than $19 billion in recruiting, hiring, and training replacements, resulting in 230 million days of lost productivity.
This has made employee retention a critical priority for retail brands. Store associates are the heartbeats of their organizations. Helping them do their jobs more efficiently can go a long way in keeping associates happy.
Your retention efforts are only as effective as the tools that enable your associates. Your point-of-sale (POS) system, specifically, is one of the most integral parts of your employees’ day-to-day work life.
So, let’s walk through first, why employee experience is important for retail brands. Then, we’ll cover how the right POS (a mobile POS) can help drive increased employee satisfaction and retention.
There are many reasons why retail employees have grown disengaged recently, from heightened customer expectations to the increased focus on ecommerce. But as any savvy brand knows, if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.
Several studies illustrate that offering an exceptional employee experience can boost engagement, which in turn creates a more loyal and productive workforce.
It’s clear, isn’t it? If you invest in making your staff happy, they will stick with you. For retail brands especially, investing in employee experience can have a profound positive impact on revenue. By improving employee experience, brands can increase their revenue by more than 50%.
With the role of store associates changing, retail technology is integral to engaging your staff and boosting employee satisfaction and retention. A mobile point-of-sale (POS) system helps reduce operational pain points and makes it easier to connect with customers. Let’s go over how.
Technology’s primary purpose is to make our lives easier. Yet, ask anyone that has worked in retail, and one of the biggest frustrations they have is battling against clunky legacy POS systems. These solutions are so far removed from the technology we interact with in our day-to-day.
Smartphones, however, have become second nature to people of almost all ages. By the end of 2020, around 78% of the world’s population were smartphone users, a number that has grown since. Therefore, putting something like an iPhone into the hands of a store associate feels natural.
With a mobile based POS, the overall onboarding and training is minimal. These systems are designed with an interface that looks and behaves like most common apps do, so it’s easy for new users to pick it up quickly. That said, there are bound to be some workflows that require education, so it’s important to have some retail tech training in the early stages.
The more you invest in training your staff, the greater the likelihood they will feel empowered and fulfilled to perform in their roles. And you’ll reap the rewards.
Ask any of your in-store staff, and they’ll tell you customer attitudes profoundly affect their day-to-day satisfaction. In fact, negative experiences with customers may be contributing to the high rate of resignation in some industries.
The retail checkout experience is critical to the overall customer experience. Around a third of customers (33%) want your store associates to be able to check them out on a mobile device from anywhere in the store. Customers are used to fast and seamless checkout experiences online. Long lines and slow service at checkout are a jarring contrast to what customers have become used to. While legacy POS systems are usually the culprit, staff are the ones who take the blame.
Effective employee management in any sized business hinges on your ability to unblock the areas that stop employees from doing their jobs effectively. Empowering your staff with a mobile POS allows them to move customers through the checkout process faster and outfits them with everything they need to keep customers happy.
Checkout is a make-or-break moment in the shopping experience. Long lines and hold-ups just won’t cut it. Brands running their stores on a mobile POS don’t need to worry because the mobile checkout feature is the ultimate line busting tool. Associates can facilitate the end-to-end checkout process from anywhere on the store floor.
The key to happier customers is a great experience. Stores are the pinnacle of experience for avid shoppers who care deeply about one-to-one interactions with your staff. Which makes every minute your associates can spend at their side a win.
With mobile checkout, store staff can facilitate any combination of transactions. This includes selling inventory from multiple locations, such as a cash-and-carry and endless aisle sale. Associates will rarely, if ever, tell customers “no.” They can offer convenient delivery options and connect every purchase to a customer account, all while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the shopper.
Tap to Pay on iPhone does exactly what the name suggests – it lets your customers tap to pay using their contactless payment method of choice. It works using near field communication (NFC) technology, which lets cards and payment readers talk to each other within a few inches. Now, it’s available on iPhone, which means phone-to-phone payments are possible with an enabled mobile POS.
It has fantastic implications for checkout, including making it super easy for customers to pay. This is ideal, as customers don’t have time for anything long and complicated in modern shopping. Additionally, transaction times are faster, which means associates can help more customers more often and reduce wait times – a real point of friction in the customer experience. Overall, the checkout process is simpler for both associates and customers.
Shifting consumer behaviors has called for a reimagining of sales and service with an elevated workforce. A call that omnichannel clienteling has answered perfectly. Equipping store staff with a mobile POS, especially, takes this to new heights by enabling associates to take the checkout process anywhere with remote selling.
By providing associates with a wealth of customer knowledge, like top customer lists, last purchase dates, most purchased items (and more!), combined with real-time inventory data, they can create remote selling experiences that surpass even the intimacy of the in-store experience. Associates can sell from anywhere; in-store, at home, and online.
Sure, customers adore this level of service, with more personalized experiences that foster greater loyalty. And the benefits for your business are nothing to scoff at – you’ll use inventory optimally, create new selling scenarios, and expedite sales. Beyond this, your associates become more productive. Even during store down time, they can be chatting with customers, offering advice, and helping them choose, and buy, more items they love.
Empowering your staff with capabilities like mobile checkout, Tap to Pay on iPhone, and clienteling effectively removes the root cause of many customer frustrations, delighting them instead. And a happy customer equals a happy associate.
Managing inventory is notoriously laborious for retail brands. We’ve all heard the stories about late-night inventory receiving or customers left alone on the store floor while an associate checks the stockroom. With a modern POS with natively integrated store inventory capabilities, these tales are a thing of the past.
Having store inventory information at their fingertips allows staff to quickly answer stock questions for customers without leaving their side. During peak shopping periods, whether the holidays or other seasonal sales, this capability is incredibly powerful.
Additionally, with capabilities like endless aisle, store associates can sell items that aren’t available on hand. Whether located in another store or a warehouse or distribution center, there is real-time visibility into what’s available and where.
More than this, having enterprise-wide inventory visibility gives staff greater freedom. Receiving inventory is no longer an event that takes an associate away from the floor for hours. With a mobile POS, associates can receive new collections, replenishments, and transfers easily and accurately. This makes the whole re-stocking process smoother and means your associates can spend more time focusing on customers.
Arming your store associates with deep inventory knowledge not only makes them super clever, but it also pays off for your bottom line. This is because as many as 94% of consumers buy more when they interact with knowledgeable employees.
With the “Great Resignation” in full effect, the time to prioritize your retail employees is now. Store associates want to feel supported and uplifted throughout their employee journey.
So, ask yourself a couple of key questions:
Retail brands thrive when they deliver exceptional customer experiences focused on telling one brand story. And associates are the main supporting characters. An investment in employee experience is an investment in customer experience.
Interested in learning more about how to empower your associates with technology? Check out our mobile POS solution.
