How the POS terminal can help you get happy customers

Card, cash, or MobilePay?

Many payment options are good service. With a good POS terminal, your customers can pay in many different ways. We recommend that your POS-terminal, as a minimum, can handle the following ways of payment:

• Card payment – ideally with the ability to accept different card types, but in particular Visa.
• Payment with cash – it’s still a legal requirement.
• Payment with MobilePay – more and more are using this option.
• Contactless payment with the mobile phone – e.g. Apple Pay
• Self-service via QR code and digital menu – payment without the need for a waiter

If you offer the above-mentioned ways of payment it’s almost guaranteed that your customers can pay the way they prefer. Don’t let the customers be limited to one or two ways of payment. Flexibility is important.

As a restaurateur, you probably already know about the four former ways of payment, but something new the customers are asking for is self-serving solutions – both when ordering and paying.

As a restaurateur, you can accommodate this with an advantage. Depending on what kind of restaurant you run, there are multiple different options for self-serving solutions. We experienced that especially self-serving through a QR-code and a digital menu is rising in popularity, and it’s a solution that’s usable no matter the size and type of restaurant. With this solution your customers can serve themselves – typically by using the digital menu – almost in the same way as if they had to order takeaway.

This solution alleviates, among other things, that guests try in vain to get in touch with a busy waiter when payment is due. At the same time, the solution ensures that the waiter does not make mistakes in the order – and this gives your waiters more time to provide your guests with good service.

A handheld payment terminal provides effective service

At some restaurants and cafes, customer has to walk to the counter to pay their bill. That’s not ideal if you want to provide a sharp service for your customers.

In the bar, the customer risks standing in line, and confusion about what the customer bought can appear because it’s not necessarily the same waiter making the order as the waiter who took it at the table. That could make it a less good experience for the customer.

To avoid this you can, as earlier mentioned, use self-service with QR codes, men you could also, with the advantage, use a handheld payment terminal. With the handheld payment terminal, the waiter has the opportunity to take payment right at the customer's table. This means that the customer no longer risks standing in line at the counter, and the waiter is well prepared when they go to the table for payment.

A POS terminal with automatic inventory gives you an overview

“That’s unfortunately sold out”.

It’s a pity to have something on the menu which isn’t available to the customer because you don’t have it in stock.

Of course, a product can be sold out, but If your POS terminal has automatic inventory, you will, at any time, have an overview of your stock, and that will give you a better opportunity to have the products you use in stock all the time. As a bonus you can make have a minimum on all of the different products in your inventory, then you’ll automatically get a note when it’s time to order the specific product again.

In this way, you’ll avoid the situation where the customer asks for something on the menu in vain, and then gets a bad experience, but instead, you make sure that the customer always gets what they want.

An effective POS terminal frees up more time to serve your customers

To give good service is – along with the quality of the food and the location of the restaurant – essential if you want your customers to return. That’s why it’s important, that your employees cherish your customers and have the time it takes to provide a good service.

It can mostly be solved with extra staff, but that is an expensive and shortsighted solution. Instead, you should focus on how your employee's workflows can be improved. You can identify the relevant areas, but a good POS terminal, with its equipment and integrations, can contribute

A good POS terminal can, among other things, improve your employee's work-flows by:

• Minimizing administrative tasks – e.g. by automatic bookkeeping, automatic inventory, and roster planning
• By eliminating entering data twice – orders received through the handheld terminal are automatically sent to the POS terminal. The same thing goes for takeaway orders from e.g. Wolt or your own takeaway platform.
• By minimizing the time spent administrating the tables and bookings – the waiters now only have to work in one system instead of two.

This provides time saved that can be used on giving your customers the best possible experience instead when they visit your restaurant.

A good POS terminal also has the opportunity to integrate with other external systems such as table booking systems, roster planning system, and digital loyalty platforms. If your POS provider offers integrations to these, the use of the systems can give your customers an even better experience when they visit you – even before they put their food through the door.