4 Ways to Speed Up Your Checkout Lines

After a lengthy bout of shopping, the last thing a customer wants to do is wait in a long checkout line.  For shoppers, it can be frustrating to see a single sales associate working at only one open register.  However, there are many ways to alleviate your patron’s stress other than hiring more workers. Consider these 4 opportunities for improvement:

1. Accept Credit Cards and New Forms of Payments: Accepting credit cards moves your line much faster than if each customer is fumbling through their cash. Other new payment technologies like Apple Pay are contactless payments and are, by far, the fastest way to pay.  Not only do these technologies speed up the checkout process, but they are much more secure than magnetic-strip card transactions.
2. Buy an intuitive point-of-sale system: Get a POS system that is as fast and easy as possible. Also, if you eliminate any manual keying-in, and centralize your store data and the payment process, you’re minimizing your efficiencies. This leads to your store’s saving money, and your shoppers’ having a faster checkout experience.  It’s a Win-Win for both you and the shopper!
3. Keep a well-trained staff: Before you put staff members behind a checkout counter, make sure they are adequately trained.  Test them on finding items, taking payments, sending receipts and issuing refunds.  If an item doesn’t appear in the POS, they should be able to quickly add the item manually.  Once they can quickly ring up a complicated order, they are ready to work the counter!
4. Send Digital Receipts: Printing receipts can not only take up time, but it isn’t always environmentally friendly.  Consider integrating a POS system that has the ability to email customers receipts.

No one likes waiting. When you get your lines flowing quickly, you’ll have happy customers—and happy customers always come back!