CategoryCustomer Service

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.

Many of us at Tower Systems have today off as we are based in Victoria and it is the Melbourne Cup (it’s a horse race, apparently) holiday. But fear not, our help desk is up and running, support is at hand. Call any of our office numbers if you need help. We are true to our motto … we’re here to help.

People buying a retail business have plenty to learn. Often, those sewing the retail business are not as thorough in their training as they could be. to help address this we offer personal training for those boys ng a business in which our POS software is situated.

We have packaged together two full days of new owner training. This is personal, one-on-one, training, tailored to the needs of that business, using the data from the business, ensuing that the training is relevant and appropriate.

This personal new owner training ensures that the new business owner knows the POS software and how it can be used to drive the business.

When we sell our POS software to a new business we always provide at least 2 days personal training. It makes sense that someone buying a business in which our POS software is already in use taps into at least 2 days of training. That is what this unique package of training  for new business owners is about.

This training is for new business owners. It reflects that our software is already installed and in use in the business … this makes the training different to what we would do for a fresh installation.

Through the training, we help new business owners develop their own business management processes relating to the POS software. We also can audit the prior use of the software and the data managed by the software, to help the new business owner make data-based decisions. We can also review the business practices of team members, to ensure they are focussed on proper use of the software.

This new owner training from Tower Systems is offered at a considerable discount for new business owners – to make it price appealing and thereby encourage them to make a decision that is good for business.

While new owners can learn the software through our knowledge base articles, our help desk services are priced on the basis that those using our software have been trained.

We know for sure that people who are trained love our software more.

We encourage all new business owners to undertake the new owner training package we offer. They will benefit and their business will benefit.

To find out the current cost of our discounted new owner training, please check out online shop.

With the opening up of retail in Victoria as announced by the Victorian Premier this afternoon, we stand ready to help members of our small business retail community to be ready to open up.

Our help for Victorian retailers opening up includes data preparation, training catch-up, back-up checks and business process reviews.

With some shops having been closed for months, catch-up training is helpful.

We are doing this work without distracting from our work for the majority of our retail customers who are open and trading already.

Our office is open and we’re here providing assistance to retailers using our POS software today. This is a usual Saturday for us even though it is AFL Grand Final day.

Yes, that’s right, the delayed AFL Grand Final is set to play tomorrow. Here in Victoria, where we are headquartered, we have a public holiday today to ‘celebrate’. Our office is open, though, serving our customers.

We have announced to our customers a Q&A with our Software Development Manager for next week, on Wednesday.

This is an opportunity for retailers from our POS software customer community to speak directly with our Software Development Manager, to ask questions and provide feedback. It’s rare that software companies make opportunities like this available, but common for us as we embrace opportunities for free-flowing communication.

The session is available for any of our customers, with access details shared through our usual customer communications channels.

This morning we announced a competition for our customers. We are looking for the best POS software screen designs with 6 bottles of awesome Champagne up for grabs. Using out POS software, our customers have excellent control over their POS software screen design. Here is what we announced:

Win a bottle of champagne.

Hey, Retailer 3 users, share your POS screen design to get in the running to win one of 6 bottles of Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010 champagne. We will choose 6 well-designed R3 POS screens as winners, each receiving a bottle.

To enter, post a photo of your POS screen on our private customer Facebook page. Or, email support@towersystems.com.au with the subject – POS Screen competition. We will post it to the private Facebook page for you. Now, if you want to play with your design, this video may help: https://vimeo.com/387825075

We will keep this competition open for a week, until 9am October 19, 2020. We will choose 6 POS screen designs as the winners and send a bottle of this champagne as a price.

Why are we running this competition? Because we are seeing some awesome POS software screen designs, designs that we think could inspire others to create better POS software screens. You have excellent flexibility in the software. We hope seeing the designs inspires you.

Here is what you could win: Heidsieck And Co Monopole Gold Top 2010. Qantas wine experts had this to say: Heidsieck and Co Monopole are one of the oldest Champagne houses in the Champagne region. Gold Top 2010 is balanced and pleasing with hints of roasted and dry fruits, hazelnut, reminiscent of honey with a gingerbread dominance. This is a nice drop.

It’s a public holiday today in Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and the Australia Capital Territory, we are here, open for business, serving small business retailers through our POS software help desk and more.

All our interstate and New Zealand numbers are up and running.

It’s pouring rain in Melbourne and snowing in Canberra right now. In this kind of weather it’s good being inside, and warm. Oh, and safe, being safe at this point in 2020 is good. In fact, it’s fantastic.

But … we’re focused on what matters to our customers. Today is a business as usual Saturday. We are providing live support for our small business retail POS software customers. Offering help, advice and training.

Like all Saturdays, we’re here, working from home, but here providing the services we promise.

We are hosting another series of live POS software training workshops for our small business retail customers. These sessions are run through our secure commercial Zoom account and are recorded and packaged for easy 24/7 access by thine unable to make the sessions.

Here is the schedule:

• Friday, August 21 @ 10am. XchangeIT data fails. How you can avoid these, save money and stop physical returns. This is a newsagent specific session.
• Monday, August 24, @ 10am. How to identify dead stock – taking a fresh look at this smart report.
• Tuesday, August 25 @ 10am. How to restructure your stock file to drive better value for you. With stock manager, this is easy if you know how. We will show you.
• Wednesday, August 26 @ 10am. Shopify / Woo website sync. What to check if you have an issue.
• Thursday, August 27 @ 10am. How to setup discount vouchers. And how to use them to differentiate your business.

All Tower Systems customers have free access to this training. each session will include Q&A time on any topic.