By Manisha Reetesh Dhingra, Co-Founder, WiZ Care
Dec 26, 2022 / 8 MIN READ
India’s retail sector was worth $836 billion in FY 2022, with a staggering 81.5 percent contribution from traditional retail, organized brick-and-mortar retail makes up 12 percent of the overall retail market, followed by online sales channels at 6.5 percent. These statistics mean that offline retail is here to stay.
With retailers setting up multiple outlets, business operations keep becoming more complex and nuanced, customer experience is of utmost importance considering all forms of journey within their shopping experience starting from buying to checkout processes whether it's online or offline.
Let’s understand this with the help of an example:
You are a multi-chain retail owner always thinking about offering a smooth, convenient and personalized shopping experience for your customers across your multiple outlets/stores. You may have a great product, but a bad customer experience will result in customers forgetting about your product and remembering only the poor experience. Turning a first-time buyer into a loyal customer is the key to retail.
There are multiple parts to a customer journey and a seamless checkout experience is one of the crucial ones. Improving transaction efficiency and offering a seamless purchase experience for customers has become imperative for retail stores.
Let’s take a deep dive to understand how an integrated payments POS solution can benefit your business:
Deeply Integrated Payment Solution, Error-Free Process, and Reduced Transaction Time - With a regular non-integrated payment machine, the processes are manual and cumbersome, mostly with limited payment options and higher checkout time. This increases the time taken for operational processes including reconciliation, payment processing for various modes via separate devices, total checkout time, etc.
An integrated payment solution has features such as existing billing system integration, auto reconciliation, and automated reports all of which help in streamlining the payment processes. It enhances the operational efficiency of the sales and finance teams by eliminating manual errors and cutting down on the time spent in manual reconciliation and payment transaction reporting. More so, multiple payment options under a single system make the checkout process smooth and swift.
Meeting the Increased Demand for Digital Payment Solutions - Meeting customer expectations is getting tougher by the day. To add to that, providing the convenience of all payment modes requires individual alliances with each payment company which is tedious and cumbersome to maintain.
This brought about the demand for a single platform that not only accepted all traditional payment methods but also new-age digital payment modes such as QR code, UPI, SMS Pay, etc including integrated affordability solutions.
Consistent Omnichannel Experience - Consistent customer experience across touchpoints is equally crucial for brand loyalty. It is important to give customers the same swift journey, be it in-store or during delivery. With Integrated Payment Solution, retailers can facilitate all kinds of payments across all offline touchpoints --at the billing counter, anywhere within the store/branch, at kiosks, at the customer’s doorstep, and remotely (SMS-based payment).
Faster Checkout and Scale Business - There is a saying “The best form of customer service is self-service”. When it comes to checkout, customers expect that it should be fast and super easy without having to wait for a long time to complete the transaction.
With integrated solutions, you can either add a self-checkout point for such customers or offer a quick yet assisted payment experience using a queue-busting solution which in turn relieves pressure on the billing desk and also supports increasing and scaling the business.
Single Customer View and Analytics - When there are multiple PSPs involved, there is no single window of information to view customer & transaction details for offline & online payments. This in turn requires more time and effort for reconciliation and payouts.
With integrated POS solutions, it is possible to integrate with PSPs for online payments to create one portal for merchants to view online & offline payments, thereby creating a single customer & transaction view for all transactions across outlets. Furthermore, the auto-reconciliation feature helps in generating the payout reports from the bank (for offline and online payments) and helps you avail a single reconciled file of the transactions.
Tapping Into New Business Models, Scale, and Stay Ahead of Competition - There has been a complete shift in customer behaviors regarding different forms of shopping. Customers today prefer options such as BOPIS (Buy Online Pick up Instore), BORIS (Buy Online Return in Store), etc which puts lots of pressure on the business to meet such demands. Due to this shift in behavior, businesses have to adopt the latest technologies to stay ahead of their competitors.
A survey says that 75 percent of customers who buy online and pick up/ return in-store make unplanned purchases within the store, which clearly signifies that there is a business that can be tapped into provided the businesses are ready at touch points.
Integrated payments solutions make it possible for your customers to return items conveniently and get easy refunds thereby creating a seamless ‘return in-store' experience.
To Sum Up
Every business resorts to technology-backed solutions for streamlining processes in order to scale and grow. Similarly, a technology-backed payment platform provides multiple benefits under one umbrella such as a variety of payment options including deviceless solutions, value-added services such as affordability solutions, automated settlements, reporting and analytics, payment-related insights for your business and customers, and many more. It helps you transform your payments from mere acceptance to a seamless experience!
India’s retail sector was worth $836 billion in FY 2022, with a staggering 81.5 percent contribution from traditional retail, organized brick-and-mortar retail makes up 12 percent of the overall retail market, followed by online sales channels at 6.5 percent. These statistics mean that offline retail is here to stay.
With retailers setting up multiple outlets, business operations keep becoming more complex and nuanced, customer experience is of utmost importance considering all forms of journey within their shopping experience starting from buying to checkout processes whether it's online or offline.
Retail behemoths are currently riding the "digital wave." The pre-pandemic start-ups, who relied on technology to reach consumers more effectively and quickly, undoubtedly paved the way for…
Even as technology has helped bring the world closer and made several tasks easier to navigate, it has also resulted in the chronic problem of e-waste. Scores of gadgets such as smartphones and other…
Cross-border e-commerce stands out as an exciting prospect in the fiercely competitive world of e-commerce, where business owners are continuously searching for new frontiers of development and…