CategoryCustomer Service

Tomorrow, we are hosting another free POS software Q&A opportunity for local small business retailers, offering help for those keen to work on their businesses.

With so many small businesses on the Eastern Seaboard of Australia in lockdown, we know this is an opportunity to help local retailers and team members to enhance their skills, to get more from our software.

We will offer practical advice and help. We will also be guided by questions and explore areas of concerns to the retailers who joins us for this Zoom meeting.

Those who can’t be with us live will have access to a video.

We are hosting another of our popular lockdown Q&A sessions for small business retailers in our POS software community.

This next session will be Tuesday next week at 10am. We will have skilled team members from several of our teams from development to training to customer engagement. They will answer any and all questions, and take on board suggestions.

Since March 2020 we have been hosting these events, providing small business retailers opportunities to leverage quieter trade during lockdown.

Access is open to any retailers in our POS software community.

In Victoria we are now in our sixth Covid lockdown. Here at Tower Systems, it;’s business as usual. Our office is open as we meet the criteria for being essential, given the types of businesses we serve.

So, our office is open, providing all our usual services. We have a crew here taking care of essential office-based tasks.

We also have a wonderful crew working from home, around the country, providing awesome customer service.

From offering one-on-one POS software training to installing software to helping improve the quality of business data to being a sounding board, we are here in service of local small business retailers in Australia and New Zealand.

In late February 2020 we put in place a set of measures, assistances and advice to help any of our customers forced to close temporarily due to Covid.

Those measures, assistances and advice remain in place today, accessible to all of our customers.

As businesses in NSW are today further impacted by Covid transmission suppression moves by the state government, we are here to help in specific and tangible ways.

Today, Saturday, for example, we have been taking calls for help from business owners with businesses in NSW with queries about transacting online, engaging with click and collect or closing from shopfront trade. There are several opportunities in our software and our broader customer service arrangements to help our community of customers.

Last week we mailed our latest customer newsletter to our POS software customers. We do this regularly, we well as our weekly customer emails, as some customers prefer to read a print copy.

Across the two pages of the latest customer newsletter we share plenty of news about our specialty retail POS software, our latest customer service survey, new advice sheets published, new staff, up to date support contact details and more.

Communication is important to us, and we know it is important to our customers. The print newsletter is something we have published for decades and while email is our prime channel of outbound communication, the print newsletter helps us reach those who are less engaged with email.

Between the newsletter, emails, phone calls and our regular Zoom meetings, here at Tower Systems we offer our customers many touchpoints through which they can learn more, influence more and enjoy more.

We surveyed our POS software customers recently and have found the results most useful. While we follow up each help desk call with a quick service survey, this latest survey was broader. It’s also part of a series with which we are engaging, but more on that later.

This latest survey was focussed on understanding value. We did this across ten questions and compared the results with benchmark results, to see where we sit.

Plus, we have followed up with some customer who asked for contact direct without leadership team.

Being accessible is key to our customer engagement – through surveys like this latest one, our escalation process, our regular online workshops and also through one-on-one calls.

We are grateful to the customers who completed this survey and the hundreds who have taken part in other surveys over the last year. Every feedback point is appreciated and valuable.

While our office is closed today for the Queen’s Birthday pub lic holiday, even though it is not our birthday, we’re offering customer support through our after hours numbers and additional capacity if needed.

We are grateful for the terrific session with our POS software customers last week in which we discussed software enhancement ideas and how our transparent software Ideas platform works.

Established in March 2009 and inspired by US author Jeff Jarvis and his book What Would Google Do?, the Software Ideas platform has been a wonderful Gide to opportunities for software enhancements as much as for customer education – when ideas suggested already exist in the software.

The Tower Systems customer forum last week explored several POS software enhancement idea suggestions and shared with customers how to submit ideas and vote on them.

What makes a good software enhancement idea?

1. Something that removes a pain point. We call pain points friction. We are keen to remove friction. It could be an extra keystroke, a screen design that could be easier to follow, more meaningful text. This type of change request is usually about us editing what we have today.
2. Something that adds value to your specific retail channel. We are a vertical market software company, with software for specific retail channels. The more we serve the needs of a retail channel the more sales we can expect … and all customers benefit from this.
3. Wide appeal. We like changes that will benefit many hundreds of retailers. We all like to think that how we run our businesses is how everyone in our niche should run their business. It’s not as simple as that. So, in making a software change or enhancement suggestion, please consider broad appeal beyond your business.
4. Easy. We are not afraid to take on complex changes, we love easy changes as an easy win is good for us and good for you. Each changes are easy to put at the top of the queue.

Our transparent approach to software ideas is a differentiator for us … for which we are grateful.

Tower Systems is a vertical market POS software company serving a range of specialty retail channels with software tailored to their needs. It is this specialisation that is served by the company’s transparent approach to harvesting ideas from customers as it leads to better software for the niche retail channels.

We have a separate focus within our help desk team that is solely for new customers … to help them settle into the software and land with comfort in the use of our POS software.

This focussed work solely with new customers helps them enjoy the software more, and sooner.

Their early feedback helps us help them tune the software through its many settings so that it is better in it’s service of our customers.

We are grateful to be able to offer this and appreciate our new customers who love the service. It means a lot.

When considering a POS software company for your retail business, consider accessibility. While the software itself is important, knowing how to drive it and how to leverage it matters as it is this that will determine how much value you get from the POS software.

Transparency is key. Here are examples of POS software company transparency, in areas where customer value is the core focus. These are all things we offer here at Tower Systems:

• Regular customer forums with our leadership team, including our software development management team – to preview new facilities in development as well as to ask any questions or provide any feedback.
• Use of professional platforms for group meetings and sessions, such as a commercial licence for Zoom, rather than cheap or free platforms that are not of the same quality or that may not offer the same security. Professional software companies use professional tools.
• A structured process for suggesting and voting on POS software changes.
• Easy access to a clear escalation process should there be a query or request for further assistance on any issue.
• Unlimited top-up training after the software is installed and setup.
• The ability to understand and assess software changes before you decide whether to install the software update. Software that is auto-installed without user input or control of limited, often frustrating.
• Easy access to the CEO level of the business.
• Access to the business through multiple entry points: phone, email, social media, web form and more. Being able to make contact where it works best for you is key.

Why do these points matter? It’s simple, really … the value you derive from the POS software in your business is more likely to be determined by the level of service from the POS software company than the software itself. Not always is this the case, but often it is. Good software backed by poor and non-trans[parent service will not be good software for you.

This is why it is vital to thoroughly investigate the company behind the POS software, to fully understand the people and their service model. This will guide your decision and help you see if the company is as helpful as it needs to be in service of your business needs and goals.

Last week, we added a ne team member to our POS software help desk, someone with fifteen years retail experience, most of that using our POS software in business, not just one shop but several.

Their retail experience is terrific as is their knowledge of our software and their ability to train retail employees in the use of our software.

We are grateful to find this new team member and expand our head count to accomodate their position.

We are also grateful to our growing customer base for encouraging the head count growth. 2021 is just over four months old and already it is a terrific year for Tower Systems, and this plays well for our customer community.

We did let our customers know a couple of weeks ago about the new team member. Their support has been terrific.

Memorable customer service is the most important point of difference a retail business can have, especially a business which does not make what it sells and therefore could have its products being sold by any other business apple to reach the same pool of shoppers.

We call it memorable customer service because it truly has to be that … memorable. So memorable that it is praised by your customers to others.

Good customer service should be the norm, the lowest hurdle any retail business can jump. Memorable customer service, the level of customer service that makes a shopper talk about the experience to their friends, must be the goal and it is the word of mouth from these customers that is a factor in driving traffic growth.

Memorable customer service is just as vital to Point of Sale software companies as it is for retail businesses. Since we own retail businesses as well as our POS software company we see it, live it and reach for it from both sides.

This is why we work hard to encode the ability to focus on customer service in our Point of Sale software.  That’s right, retailers using our software have touch points they can leverageusing software which help deliver the kind of memorable customer service we are talking about here.

Memorable customer service in retail, just as in a software company, is experiences which exceed expectations, it delivers benefits outside of what you expect even from a good business.  In our IT company we compete with big IT companies and small, like us, IT companies. While we want our software to be the point of difference customers notice and talk about positively, it is our customer service which is loved and mentioned to colleagues more.  Realising this was an epiphany for us.

We focus on building stronger, better and more valuable software. But we also surround this, completely, with customer service experiences which are the very best of the best. This gives us, and our customers, the best of both worlds. And we love it ourselves.

Given that most retailers do not have products unique to their businesses, delivering memorable customer service is critical to the business plan.  Small and independent retailers can do this more easily and effectively than big retailers. From the genuine smile to shoppers to product knowledge to that extra information which helps a shopper get more out of the product purchased than they would have had the purchased the product elsewhere. This added value is the key and it can be delivered in almost any situation and with any product from a stapler through to a high-end road bike.

So, beyond our software and as part of our customer service focus, we seek out opportunities to help our customers deliver memorable customer service.  Indeed, this was one topic we covered in the recent face-to-face user meetings we ran in capital cities and major regional centres around Australia.

As a Point of Sale software company, our mission is to deliver constantly improving retail management software backed with memorable customer service and going beyond this with business insights and assistance which helps our retailers themselves deliver exceptional and memorable experiences to their customers.

While our offices are closed for the Easter break, our customer service is accessible online as well as via our after hours phone network.

In addition to excellent after hours coverage by mobile phone, Tower Systems today, and for many years past, offers office based help desk POS software support. We have done this for many years – offering office based POS software help on Saturdays.

The Saturday support is full service, practical and engaged.

We are proud to continue to offer this service in support of our 3,500+ small business customers.

We’re open for business.

While it is a public holiday, our after hours POS software support services are available for any customer in need.

Over the last three weeks we have completed a major piece of work in relation to our POS software knowledge base.

We have added many new articles and revised even more existing articles.

This work delivers a better experience for our customers who search our POS software knowledge base.

With now more than 700 articles serving our small business retail customers, our refreshed and renewed knowledge base is a key differentiator for Tower Systems.

We are not done yet, however. We have more changes coming, new articles too.

Our knowledge base will continue to evolve in 2021.

We have been busy helping plenty of our retailers prep for today, Boxing Day with in-store and online deals to be managed by our software, ensuring the businesses maximising the Boxing Day sale opportunity.

Using our POS software and Shopify websites connected to our POS software we have helped retailers be ready for this.

If you are shopping today, our wish is that you shop local, shop the high street.

We have shared with our customers the details of our office hours through Christmas and the New Year period, ensuring they have easy access to our POS software support services.

While our offices are closed the actual public holidays, our after hours support network will be live throughout. Outside of them public holidays, our office is open.

There will be no Aussie summer holiday here.

Too often in small business retail, there is insufficient care for business data. Data is an asset and needs to be cared for as such. Disrespect data and data will not serve you.

This advice is for retailers, it is offered to encourage respect for data so that the business may benefit.

There is no doubt: poor business data = poor business decisions.

If you ever hope to sell your retail business, accurate business data is vital, it will determine the price you achieve for your business.

Don’t be one of those business owners who only cares about accurate business data when you decide to sell as that could be too late.

Here is all you need to do to ensure you have accurate business data.

1. Ensure you have a good department and category structure. This helps ensure the reports are useful. By good we suggest no more than fifteen departments and no more than fifteen categories within each department.
2. Arrive all stock into your POS software. The best way to do this is to receive and import into your software electronic invoices from suppliers. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.

The slower way is to manually enter invoices into your software item by item. This is done in Invoice Arrivals.

If you created an order using the software and this order subsequently arrives, you can receive the order – to save time.

1. Scan all stock you sell at the point of sale. Resist excuses like items are too small or too big or it takes too long or it is impractical. All these excuses can be countered.
2. Scan all stock you return to suppliers. Use the Returns facility.
3. Scan all stock you write off. Use the Write-off Stock facility.

Very simple, right?

Accurate business data is up to you. Not your software company, not your suppliers.

Accurate business data is 100% up to you.

Once you have accurate data, track business performance. Use the accurate data to see trends in your business, to guide better quality business decisions.

It is easy to create accurate business data. The operational and financial benefits are extraordinary.

How Tower Systems can help. Through our personal training, help desk support and knowledge base articles we offer advice, guidance and support on creating more accurate business data.

POS software support can be hard to access in some retail business situations. It could be due to technical, language or other factors.

Here at Tower Systems, our goal is to make POS software support easy to access, genuinely helpful and cost effective for small business retailers.

Our POS software support team is professional, capable and friendly. We offer access through several languages, too, to make the support experience more useful for customers where English is not their first language.

The POS software support team at Tower Systems is all in-house. That is, the company does not outsource POS software support to a cheap labour destination, there is no call centre in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, China, the Phillipines or similar, no the Tower help desk team works for the company 100% and is staffed by full time professionals.

POS software support here at Tower Systems starts with listening as this leads to understanding. get that right and we are more likely to get the customer service experience right. This is at the heard of POS software support engagement that people love.

POS software support is accessible by phone, email, text message, Facebook, Twitter, online chat and more. It is live and available through the company 24/7 given the time zones our retail partners operate through and the needs of the various niche retail channels in which we serve.

In addition to the human based support, all Tower Systems customers have access to our knowledge base. This is a deep well of resources packed with advice on how to use the software. It can be searched through a natural language query and is accessible for our customers 24/7. This easy access to updated and peer-reviewed advice about how to use our POS software makes self serve access to support a dream.

We publish to our knowledge base advice and articles based on what people tell us they want to know. We have made sure that our knowledge base articles are structured in a way that serves the immediate needs of our customers, packing articles with step by step guides into using the POS software.

We take providing POS software support seriously and do our best to provide our customers with engagement to a level and accessibility that best serves their local retail business needs.