We know as business and restaurant owners that the industry tools and the industry itself changes everyday. Staying on top of these technological advances can help you stay ahead of the curve in your business.
The point-of-sale represents the first line of revenue gathering for your business and traditional POS systems and terminals are becoming few and far between. As everyone in the digital age of restaurants realizes, your POS needs to implement and engage a wide variety of tasks such as mobile device processing for credit cards to business data gathering and transmission to other softwares utilized by managers and owners. As a business owner, you can take advantage of the latest technology by investing a POS system with built-in customer relationship management (CRM) features.
A CRM-integrated point of sale system allows you the freedom to concentrate on the most important details and people of your business. You do not have to worry about manual CRM tasks such as updating customer databases in the cloud, inputting customers information or creating sales reports. A CRM solution helps your business save time and money while helping you create and build the solid relationships you need to have with your current and future customers.
Keep reading to discover five ways your CRM-integrated POS can help increase the impact of your business.
1. Collect and organize customer information
In the digital age of the modern restaurant, data represents the key ingredient to target, create and maintain contact with your customers. CRM-enabled point of sale systems automate the information-capturing process by collecting, exporting and saving the data from an in-person or online transaction. Say goodbye to cramping the muscles in your hands with hours of manual data inputting. With your CRM, you can choose the fields you want to populate such as customer names, preferred nicknames, phone numbers, billing and shipping addresses, email addresses and more.
2. Improve the customer experience and increase your sales
Part of the information gathering process is listening to your customers and trying to realistically and efficiently meet their wants and needs. Especially if your business plays a significant role in your local community, you can help shape families’ perceptions of your business for years to come. A CRM-enabled point of sale can also delve deeper into your customer buying habits and preferences by collecting details such as allergies, common substitutions and allergies and then transmitting these specifications to the CRM for future use. You can use this data to create future discounts and marketing campaigns and undoubtedly improve your customer service and experience.
3. Determine your most loyal and regular customers
Obviously, every customer is important to the growth and future of your business. However, you know that regular customers definitely help your business than the one-off customer who never returns. Through data collection, transmission and organization, a CRM-enabled POS solution identifies the customers who keep coming back and are likely to return, the customers who provide the most revenue at your point of sale and the customers who may or may not have had a good experience and do not plan to return. A CRM also helps you with loyalty programs, gift card functionality and rewards systems as well as provide loyalty campaign ideas for social media and email marketing.
4. Help align the business goals of multiple departments
As a restaurant owner or operator, you have many plates (literal and metaphorical) plates spinning all day, every day. As in the restaurant environment itself, all forms of your communication need to be sharp and easily distributed. Your CRM-friendly point of sale synchronizes in real time vital information such as customer data and transactions for the various staff members and departments. You can select preferences for the information such as restricted access to junior employees or offer pertinent data to all parties. The one-stop shop approach of the CRM helps eliminate confusion and waste time trying to find a certain file or folder.
5. Automate backend processes
Though your CRM-integrated POS provides a large amount of power at the point of sale, the solution can also focus on the automation of backend processes such as the creation of client records, reporting, data exportation and population for email marketing lists and loyalty programs. As stated many times in this post, you save time, money and energy and get the opportunity to continue creating an excellent experience for both staff and customers.