The POS Software Blog
News from Tower Systems about locally made POS software for specialty local retailers.
We are running reduces POS software support today as Victoria is on holidays for the Melbourne Cup and the rest of Australia slows for the day and stops for the running of the cup.
Following a long-established tradition, we are running help desk coverage today with reduced staff from offices outside our Melbourne head office.
Our after hours numbers and management escalation numbers are available all through.
If you are betting today – we hope your horses win!
We are well into the roll our of our latest POS software update for small business retailers.
Following a comprehensive beta release cycle, the update was cleared a week ago for release. We started emailing customers, in batches, releasing access to the update.
This batched approach to the release helps us manage the help desk load.
Giving our customers control over when they install an update is important to us and appreciated by our customers.
We are thrilled to be delivering a comprehensive update that is packed with enhancements suggested and voted on by our customers. We are grateful for the engagement of our customers in achieving this.
What a terrific bounce for the last quarter of 2016.
We have a new position to fill on our POS software help desk and have been running a campaign at Seek that from the outsets seeks to attract people with an attention to detail and who are proactive. We have done this by embedding in the ad two requirements, the responses to which have helped us easily separate the candidates.
Here is the ad:
Interviews are well under way with the final round expected Monday.
We are excited for the opportunity to expand the experiences within our help desk team.
It is almost 9am today, Saturday October 22, 2016, and our help desk based out of our head office has been busy answering questions for customers and providing training. Our leadership team, too, has taken calls already.
The majority of calls on the weekend are not about problems with the POS software. Some relate to retail supplier files, others relate to other software and some calls are for business advice.
As we are accessible we take the calls and help as much as possible.
A core tenet of good customer service is being accessible to your customers when they need you. We are proud to be available on days like today.
Where is our POS software company today?
Being a certified Xero partner, listed on their website and participating in their events positions Tower Systems with authority in this space of POS software Xero integration.
We appreciate the Xero support from being a partner with them. For us, in several of our specialty retail channels, this is differentiating. It positions us differently to competitors that are not this connected with Xero and not lusted on their website.
Our Xero integration is clean, neat, with many users in many different retail channels. We are also working with accountants and bookkeepers in many locations helping them serve their customers leveraging the POS software / xero integration.
While we link to other accounting solutions, Xero is the winner in our view based on our own personal experience with it.
The Retailer To Xero Link Makes Accounting Easy
The powerful Tower Advantage Link platform allows Tower Systems’ specialist retail software to connect directly to Xero, one of Australia’s most popular and streamlined accounting services. Linking Retailer to Xero saves you precious time by completing the majority of your day-to-day accounting for you. We are experts at bringing independent retail businesses and Xero together and pride ourselves on connecting business owners with such an innovative, useful service.
We are thrilled to have a new voice on our help desk. James has come to us from retail where he had years of experience using our software. When he speaks with a retailer using our software, he can speak from his own experience.
This is another difference for our POS software company. We have people here on our help desk with recent retail experience using our software. This helps provide context for advice and in small business, context can be everything.
Anyone can read a script in proving POS software support. It takes retail passion and knowledge to provide genuinely useful POS software support. That is our goal through the people we bring on board an the nurturing we provide them in what they do.
Our Australian based POS software help desk is a valuable differentiator for us.
A couple of weeks ago start-up Blueshyft mishandled communication with small business newsagents – saying POS software companies were responsible that Blueshyft ought be responsible for. The result was many POS software help desk calls that caused use to spend money on calls that were 100% the responsibility of Blueshyft.
Here at Tower Systems we did the work, provided the service. Then, we took a look at what Bluieshyft did and wrote to our customers:
Poor communication from Blueshyft disrespects you and us.
Blueshyft emailed newsagents today asking them to call their POS software company for a file update.
Blueshyft had not told us about the update, we did not have the file, we had not seen the file and could, therefore, not help.
But the support calls came. In huge number. Newsagents calling us because Blueshyft told them to. Some customers were rude to Tower employees, saying we were fools for not knowing about this.
This all happened when Gavin Williams, our COO, and I were on a flight from there Gold Coast back to Melbourne. We had been on the Gold Coast on business.
Our help desk was slammed – all because Blueshyft had kept us in the dark and because some newsagents didn’t believe that we had no knowledge of this new file.
I spoke with Blueshyft CEO Kain Warwick 45 minutes ago and expressed by frustration at what is, in my opinion, appalling communication from Blueshyft and a lack of respect for what Tower Systems does for them.
We get no compensation for any work related to Blueshyft. XchangeIT is paid to do what they do. I suspect Blueshyft pays VANA for their support and kind words. Yet the POS software company with the most newsagents is expected to be mind readers and know about a file we have never seen.
What happened today is ridiculous.
I have told our help desk we will not take calls on this new file. Instead, we have updated our online advice. This has all the instructions you need to load the file. Click here for our advice.
Had Blueshyft been professional, they would have provided the file, let us test it, let us provide them with advice on loading and then communicated with you. Instead, they dumped the heavy lifting on companies like ours for no compensation at all.
But on the file, it has 2,700 stock items. It does not make sense they want to bloat your system with all these but that is a separate issue.
Yes, I am frustrated as it is things like this that divert our attention from providing support individual customers of ours call us for – calls from the businesses that pay for our support services. Blueshyft is freeloading at my expense and, ultimately, at your expense.
Mark Fletcher
Managing Director
0418 321 338
The day is drawing to a close here in Melbourne and we have some time for reflection on the day. Thanks to the help from our Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide support team members and folks from Melbourne in for the day, we are happy with the coverage delivered today.
Help desk calls are in good shape. Queries have been handles. Training over the phone has been provided. We have also been able to provide some retail business management advice.
We are retail-focussed here at Tower Systems. We understand the reliance of our customers on easy access to their POS software. This is why we take care to ensure good coverage even on days of public holidays.
If the grand State of Victoria, Australia, today is a public holiday so we have the opportunity to prepare for tomorrow’s AFL Grand Final. So, most of us are off today, relaxing. However, we have made arrangements for others on our team interstate to handle help desk traffic. Also, our after hours numbers are live for any overflow issues.
Our official company position is we want the Bulldogs to win. However, our prediction is for an easy Swans victory.
Here at Tower Systems we prefer human contact with our customers.
We don’t use one of those annoying computer run phone systems forcing you through a bunch of menu selections.
We don’t run a call centre offshore, getting you to talk with people who can only follow a script rather than having a conversation.
We don’t force you to put every query in writing.
No, doing business with us, accessing customer support through is is personal. Here is the information we share with our customers weekly. You will see real names, direct numbers and transparent escalation:
FREE ONE ON ONE TRAINING.
To book free training, please email: bookings@towersystems.com.au
CUSTOMER SERVICE ESCALATION PROCESS.
If you any reason you are unhappy with help desk contact, here is our escalation process to connect you with management assistance outside the help desk.
We get a thrill to see our free online POS software training workshops fill up. Full sessions mean more customers learning more about what they can get from our software. We are grateful for this customer support.
Our next session in a few days is another full free training session. We are thrilled!
Tower Systems is thrilled to have announced details of new training programs for retailers using our small business POS software.
From our POS software training page on our website, retailers can see the new topics along with repeat sessions of popular topics, training retailers tell us they love.
We are proud to continue our free online training workshops and to deliver these free, accessible from anywhere in the world, to our retailers. This is important to us as the weekly access is proof of our actions matching our words.
In selecting training topics, we go for bold topic descriptions that make the training sound different to your usual boring computer training – because the training is different, our trainers are engaged, personal and good to listen too. The training is interactive too, helping people get the best value possible from their involvement.
The new round of training just announced includes topics suggested by customers. We are grateful to customers who have engaged with us in suggesting and developing new training topics.
On-going training is important to POS software users as it helps them continue to learn long after the software is installed. This is our commitment to our customers.
While the Tower Systems POS software supports points-based loyalty, we have other more advanced and more current loyalty offers. Our new loyalty offers help retailers drive excellent sales results.
Here are some reasons why we think points based loyalty programs are not useful for small business retailers:
Our advice is to put your customers at the heart of your loyalty program. Once you do this you will quickly see the value of a more customer-focussed loyalty offer and the benefits that could flow for your business.
Tower Systems in its weekly customer email has invited retailers using our POS software to suggest topics for us to cover in our weekly online training workshops.
While we have topics to cover based on help desk and in-store experiences, we wanted to put the call out to customers to suggest topics so they can guide the curriculum of the next round.
Here is the call we included in yesterday’s customer email:
WHAT TRAINING TOPICS WOULD YOU LIKE US TO COVER?
We are currently planning our October and November free weekly online training workshops. We’d love your topic suggestions so we can ensure we provide content you find useful. Please email your training topic suggestions to support@towersystems.com.au. we promise to take on board all suggestions.
Every week we run a one hour group workshop. This is what we are calling for topic suggestions for. In addition to this we run free business specific one-on-one training. These sessions are customer specific its topics guided 100% by our customers.
The value of training is clear when we track back results achieved by customers who engage with training on getting more from their software. We are grateful to customers who embrace training.
We have made the first two rounds of reviews of candidates for another new help desk role, our second additional role this quarter. We are spoilt for choice in the pool of candidates available, making the selection of even the short list challenging.
We have to commence interviews late next week.
The scale integrated POS software from Tower Systems has passed all testing and regulatory requirements of the National Measurement Institute, an arm of the Australian government that regulates weights and measures. We have our certification.
Small business retailers using POS software integrated to scales need to ensure their software is NMI approved for if it is not, there could be consequences for the business. Ask to see the certification.
The risk from using POS software that is not certified is too great.
Here at Tower Systems we take our tag line we’re here to help seriously.
From our smart POS software to our after-sales service we help in every way we can with help taking many different forms and occurring at many different times.
We take helping our small business retail customers seriously, as a whole of company service, core to our mission – a point of pride for us.
Help starts with making contact with us easy, certain and professional.
Every one of our customers has the usual contact points you would expect to find in a POS software company. Our customers also have the direct phone numbers and email addresses of our leadership team through to the owner of the company. This demonstrates a level of commitment that is best-practice in our view.
We are so certain of our software and our after sales service that we are proud to make accessing our leadership team easy.
This is another example of the Tower AdvantageTM.
In his downtime from Tower Systems, CEO Mark Fletcher writes the Australian Newsagency Blog to encourage newsagents to embrace change and transform their businesses into retail relevant to today and beyond. Heroes a new video where mark explains some of what the book is about.
This work also helps inform Tower on retail trends as all retail businesses are transforming as a result of many factors agitating for change.
We are thrilled to have signed a new team member to join our national help desk. James will be on board in a few weeks to commence intensive training prior to taking calls solo.
This new role will help us serve our growing customer base and ensure service levels are good.
James comes to us with good retail experience. It helps to walk in the shoes of the customer.
Today we are hosting a user meeting for users of our POS software in Wellington New Zealand. yesterday we were in Auckland.
These face to face sessions are important for us and for our customers as we learn from each other and our businesses benefit as a result.
We are grateful to our customers for their support.
The live and local user meetings are in addition to other POS software user touch points:
All of this is with real people. Live. Where retailers know the names of people they are dealing with.
We are enjoying our time in NZ this week.
We are busy shortlisting candidates for a new help desk role based in our head office. With more than sixty candidates its is proving to be tough to trim the list to a more manageable mix for interview.
Our hiring process is structured like our help desk management – small business customer service focussed.
We are thrilled to be bringing our POS software user meetings to New Zealand next week – Monday and Tuesday. First in Auckland and then in Wellington, we will meet with our customers in a structured and open forum, outlining the latest software and encouraging suggestions for further enhancements.
Christchurch will be covered in a separate trip.
We have shared details with our customers and look forward to seeing them next week.
These latest meetings are an extension of our Australian national user meeting tour where the leadership of the company meets face to face with customers, answering questions, sharing insights and talking about the future of the software.
The new social media channel we opened over a week ago is receiving terrific traction and providing another customer facing / customer service opportunity. We are proud to offer this initiative and thrilled with Tower customer engagement.
Using social media in this way and giving our customers control over the conversation is empowering for them and valuable for us. We are excited to see where this goes.
We think too many software companies hide behind a corporate names rather than real people. We think they do everything possible to not talk with customers.
Here are Tower Systems we are the opposite. We like direct contact and appreciate the engagement from our customers.
An extension to our customer contact, this new channel will help reinforce the Tower Systems difference.
Several retailers at the Melbourne Gift Fair last week told us they will switch POS software to us because of the automatic updates in their current POS software.
Tower Systems does not do automatic POS software u0dates. We prefer our customers to decide which updates they want and to install them at a time of their choosing.
The complaints about automatic updates were specific. They reflect the challenges automatic updates present to small business retailers. Here are quotes from the retailers:
Here at Tower Systems or software goes through a comprehensive multi-layered quality assurance process prior to us installing it in our shops. If it works fine there it goes to our opt-in beta sites. If it goes well with them it is slowly released for optional download by our customers at a time of their choosing.
POS software is critical to the successful operation of any business that uses it. This is why the business ownwr or manager has to have control about what updates are loaded and when. Otherwise, they do not have the control of their business they need.
Today, Saturday August 13, 2016, some of our senior management have been in retail, working in retail, engaged in retail customer contact and retailer contact – soaking up the real-world experiences that further inform decisions we make about our POS software.
In addition to owning and operating our own retail businesses, we get out in the field, on the shop floor and behind the counter learning from active engagement in retail to help us create even more useful retail management software.
This is another Tower AdvantageTM.
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