5 Ways the Right POS Simplifies Repair and Services Workflows

More and more, specialty retailers offer additional in-store services — like repairs, alterations, or custom tailoring — to differentiate themselves from and offer more value than the competition. Think Best Buy’s Geek Squad, which positions staff as personal technology officers as opposed to sales associates, or jewelry stores that do repairs, cleaning, and maintenance in addition to sales. While a boost to revenue, these services require the right kind of in-store systems to manage and execute successfully.

While services set stores apart and bring in additional profit, they come with complex workflows from scheduling work orders for technicians to communicating status updates to the customer. And since enhanced customer experience is the whole point, it’s critical new workflows are seamless.

Your POS should simplify these workflows and also facilitate the intake process, which is the biggest headache for customers. It’s time to make it happen! Here are 5 ways the right POS system can help manage your in-store repairs and services:

Process Tracking

We talk to a lot of retailers that still rely on Excel lists and written notes to keep track of their repair and service requests. Unfortunately, those methods are flawed for tracking requests from start to finish. Your POS should be able to follow a flow from the moment of intake to when the item is returned to the customer. Software should also include a simple dashboard view of all in-progress service requests. This means you can stay on top of any jobs that are falling behind and manage efficiently customer expectations.

Since your POS is a shared system, whoever you designate can have access to the dashboard, so they can see service progress without contacting you.

Customized Checklists

Every retailer has unique needs and your processes for managing repair and service requests are no different. An effective point of sale should allow you to fully customize the process flows for repair, service, delivery and more, that your specific industry, store culture, and customer base may require.

What does customization look like? Think customized checklists with editable fields and drop-down lists to speed up intake, ensure consistency of the input data, and reduce human error.

Communication

One of the biggest pain points in offering any kind of repair or service is handling communications, specifically with customers. You need to reach the customer for many reasons including to give a quote once the diagnosis is made, confirm that quote, and confirm when the job is completed.

Your POS should be able to communicate from the service request ticket and capture any customer communications for future reference. This avoids the need to find customer emails and opening separate apps where communications are stored. It gives full communication visibility — all in one place. 

Reporting on Everything

There is a lot of data that can be captured in dealing with repairs and service requests. Your POS should be able to track and report it all, including intake information obtained from customers and parts used. Think about all the custom fields you would create in your process flows — such as part SKUs used during repairs. Specifically, a report on SKUs that have been repaired in the last six months may indicate a trend in specific parts that are common repair requests. 

Or think about tracking parts used. A report on this will show you what your inventory looks like in all store locations and will allow you to forecast your inventory needs. A report like that could help you avoid stock-outs of critical parts needed to complete service requests. 

Duty Transferring

Often there are many people involved in one given service request: the associate who took the customer’s information, the technician who diagnoses the problem and solution for the request, and the store manager to oversee all store-related requests, to name only a few. Not to mention, ownership of the request shifts during the entire process.

Your POS should allow you to change the owner of specific service requests and manage the hand-off between sales, technicians, and store managers. These owners should be displayed in the dashboard view of all service requests with their current status. Changes in ownership should also have a notification system, so new owners are made aware of requests they’ve been assigned.

iQmetrix’s RQ POS has these features and more. This robust POS provides repair and service functionality. Want to learn more about how RQ can help simplify the repair and services side of your business? Click below to book a meeting with a product expert.