Over the last three years newsagents have dramatically increased services offered at the counter, adding bill payment, money transfer, phone recharge and calling card sale to the more traditional newspaper account payment. Each involves technology. Some require customers to make decisions which often take longer than the commission is worth – calling cards are a good example of this. While providing these services is an important traffic generator for newsagents, we risk tarnishing our image of excellent customer service. Slow and out of date IT interfaces by some suppliers are delaying simple transactions such as sales of magazines, newspapers and greeting cards.
Newsagents need to demand that systems used and systems with which newsagents interface are state of the art. Not all current systems are – they cause traffic problems at the counter and disadvantage newsagents and their customers.
If the services part of our business is to grow, and it needs to, we need our suppliers to provide better IT links which reduce the technology at the counter rather than make it worse. To see our suppliers deliver better technology to our competitors ahead of the newsagent network is disappointing.
Isn’t the newsagent’s bill express payment system relativity new? And able to handle all your bill payments, phone cards, phone vouchers, city link etc?
Isn’t the bill express system robust and user friendly? And running through broadband? I am suprised you are having problems this early in the piece.
I agree with your statement:
“Some require customers to make decisions which often take longer than the commission is worth – calling cards are a good example of this.”
There are too many to chose from and time is money in any business. Also you probably need to have brochures for customers? More space taken.
I’d rather all of these functions to be built into each of the point of sale systems so I don’t need additional hardware at the counter. Right now I have one terminal for bill payment, phone card sale and credit card processing. I should be able to do this on every register.
Mark, if you were to have this type of functionality at each register wouldn’t it be cost prohibitive and then reduce the value of the transactions?
No, it should come with the POS software and link with existing suppliers. I’d see it as improving customer service and cutting my cost since I am funding specialist hardware at the moment just for these transactions.