The days of customers forming a line to await their turn at the checkout counter are fading into retail history. E-commerce ease and data access have transformed what customers expect from their brick-and-mortar shopping experiences. At the top of customers’ lists? A personalized, interactive shopping experience. For retailers to deliver and wow their customers, mobile point-of-sale (POS) capabilities have gone from a novelty to a must-have in recent years.
Eight in ten retailers use mobile POS in their stores, and almost half say they use their mobile POS capabilities exclusively, which is an increase from 32 percent in 2017. Retailers’ top reasons for using mobile POS include cost-effectiveness, easy access to data, ease of software integration, increased sales, and an enhanced ability to create a seamless customer experience.
What is mobile POS?
Mobile POS means empowering retail associates with a portable, handheld device, like a smartphone or tablet, to use wherever they are in the store to serve customers, process payments, or look up inventory. With just a few swipes, they are able to review a customer’s profile and purchase history, answer questions, and make a sale – all without leaving the customer’s side.
For retailers, the keys to adopting a mobile POS strategy are cost-effectiveness and ease of integration. Rather than creating a separate platform, the best mobile POS systems are an extension of the retailer’s POS system. This ensures that data is available to sales representatives in real-time – without adding extra behind-the-scenes tasks for the retailer to reconcile the mobile POS with their existing platform.
The 3 best reasons to adopt mobile POS
1. Sales empowerment
As customer expectations evolve, they’re not envisioning all-digital all the time. In fact, today’s consumers prioritize human interaction when defining their preferred shopping experiences. Eighty-two percent of shoppers say they’re looking for customer experiences with more human interaction.
Mobile POS capabilities empower retail sales associates to meet – and exceed – customer expectations. With a mobile POS-enabled smartphone or tablet in hand, sales associates can easily access detailed information about product features and answer customer questions with confidence.
With mobile POS, sales associates also have instant access to customer profile information, giving them the ability to look up a shopper’s purchase history, style preferences, or loyalty program status with just a few taps. The accessible information can be used to personalize and tailor the in-store experience, feeding the customer’s desire for human connection while positively impacting customer retention and loyalty. Sixty-six percent of customers say experience matters more than price when it comes to loyalty, and customers are 110 percent more likely to make repeat purchases when the shopping experience is personalized.
2. Checkout ease
When customers visit a brick-and-mortar location, they want to get in, find what they want, and make their purchase as easily as possible. Lines at the checkout counter can be a deterrent for customers as they enter the store or decide whether to buy something.
Mobile POS capabilities significantly reduce lines and wait times by enabling retail associates to seamlessly transition from assisting customers to processing their purchases on the spot. Research shows that mobile POS can increase customer sales transactions by up to 25 percent.
Mobile POS is also a vital tool when implementing a buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) option. BOPIS was greatly accelerated by the pandemic and shows no sign of losing its popularity with convenience-minded customers. Fifty-nine percent of customers say they plan to continue to use curbside pickup post-pandemic. Mobile POS ensures retail associates are able to easily fulfill and deliver BOPIS transactions.
3. Flexibility
Determining the right staffing levels can be a challenge for retail managers. In addition to serving customers, managers must ensure associates are available to manage inventory, handle new stock intake, refresh displays, and prep promotions.
Mobile POS provides increased flexibility, enabling the manager to redeploy resources in the moment by shifting an associate from inventory to assisting customers if there’s a spike in traffic. Then, as soon as the surge in customers recedes, the associate taps their mobile device and returns to the inventory task.
In addition, mobile POS enhances efficiencies by keeping associates on the sales floor. With inventory data at their fingertips, they can make fewer trips to the stockroom and spend more time interacting with customers.
When you’re ready to maximize your sales associates’ mobility, look to POSIM, a point-of-sale and inventory management system with the mobile POS access you need. Explore what’s possible with POSIM. Contact us for a demo.
