You hear the word “bailout” on a daily basis but it never pertains to small retailers. The feature article is about a fantastic program to help small retailers with a customer based bailout and it’s a must read. The next feature goes on to inform you about MasterCard pulling the plug on important point of sale security upgrades and we end this weeks round up with three articles that give tips on improving your overall small retail business.
1. The Day: A Bailout for Small Businesses? – The author reveals an incredible program aimed at helping small businesses with a “bailout” using customer loyalty. The project called 3/50 was created by Cinda Baxter, a former retailer now consultant. The object is simple and affordable for all consumers making it a superb idea!
At the 3/50 Project website the consumer chooses three of their favorite local small retailers and are asked to spend just $50 a month between the three stores. That’s less than $20 a store, per consumer, per month. According to Cinda Baxter, if half of the employed people do this, it could generate $42.6 billion dollars annually for local community businesses. Cinda offers ways to pass the word around the web to inform consumers how they can save the brick & mortar stores our nation was built on.
2. MasterCard halts remote POS security upgrades – For a reasons they are not disclosing MasterCard has halted the use of remote key injection (RKI) to upgrade POS systems. This means that merchants will not be able to automatically upgrade the encryption on their point of sale terminals via the network. This will have to be done manually, one terminal at a time in a secure off site location. The timing could not have been worse, the deadline looms for merchants to migrate their existing POS terminals from DES to Triple DES by July of next year.
3. How Successful Retailers Earn Customer Loyalty – This extensive article is full of invaluable insight into the consumers view of loyalty. The author talks about many retailers focusing on prices to retain customers but in reality over 68% of customers would prefer a knowledgeable and friendly staff.
By personal experience I can say that is the truth. I recently purchased lumber for a home improvement project from two different local home improvement chain stores. The first store had cheaper prices, saving myself over $40 versus buying at the second store. The issue was the customer service! The staff was not helpful or informative, a couple of the staff members did not even know where some of the products were located that I needed to complete my project. When it came to retrieving the lumber from the “outdoor back lot”, two staff members watched as my son and I loaded 10 large boards onto a cart from the second floor.
Needless to say I needed more lumber a few days later and decided for convenience arriving at the second home improvement store. Although I paid a higher price for the lumber, the staff was incredibly helpful asking if I needed help the minute I entered the lumber section. They also offered to help me choose and load my products not to mention the lumber itself was a much better quality. The moral of the story, next time I will pay the higher price for better customer service.
4. Improving Shopping Cart Conversions – Hints and tips on how to avoid the dreaded shopping cart abandonment and improve conversions. A helpful article for any online business with detail steps on improving your overall profits and your customers overall experience.
5. Writing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys – The best way to improve customer service and the consumer shopping experience is to run a customer satisfaction survey. Whether you’re a brick & mortar or online small retailer this is a perfect way to find out what your customers want, need, like and dislike. The article goes into ways to start, what questions to ask and what to do with the information afterwards.