For several years I have been receiving text messages on my mobile phone each night when my newsagency closes with the sales numbers for the day – broken down by departments – sent by my software. The text message also lets me know how close the cash balance is.
What is good about this that I know when we close and how we did every night without fail. Getting this data and using some of the other text message features make it easier to be away from the business yet still actively participate in management. This may seem like a small point but I see it as crucial to being able to be away from the newsagency. I see too many newsagents handcuffed to their businesses because of insufficient resources or poor use of technology to ensure consistency.
The best use of text messages by far is our advice to customers that their special orders or putaways are in. We have done this for years and customer still rave about the service.
I can see some exciting developments coming down the line in the use of text messages – enabling newsagents to be more interactive in their processing through text messages. In today’s market being fast and efficient can be the difference between winning or losing. Hence the imperative to embrace technology wholeheartedly – including text messages.
Mark, do you offer the SMS to customers free or charge a fee?
Free. We see it as a customer service. We know that putaways customers spend more so the payback is considerable.