As a store owner, the question is no longer if you should offer a digital receipt, but how. Large stores need to find a way to offer the service if they want to stay on top. Let me show you the most common three ways to use digital receipts.
First, let’s talk about the basics. Large stores need digital receipts more and more as a matter of hygiene. Digital receipts are quickly spreading all over the world, with Nordic retailers leading the way. This is in line with the trend toward digitalization and sustainability.
If you want to use digital receipts at your POS, you can do one of three things:
1) Using a third-party company to set up digital receipts
Several new businesses and other sellers are starting to see how they can make money in the digital retail landscape right now. Many solutions can be added to your POS so that you can give your customers digital receipts.
As a store owner, you can count on your POS partner and the third-party vendor to make digital receipts happen. For example, if you choose a POS from Extenda Retail, you will already have a lot of plug-and-play solutions with standard integrations to third parties for digital receipts. You have to make a deal with the third party, but everything else is ready to go right out of the box.
From the customer’s point of view, if they choose this option, they will probably have to make an account with the third-party vendor. With this option, the customer can also see all of their digital receipts from all of the connected stores in the same place.
2) Customization of digital receipts at the store level
You can set up digital receipts on your own if you have a smart IT team on staff. Most big stores already have a loyalty program where you can store your digital receipt.
By adding digital receipts to your loyalty programme, or app, or putting them behind a login on your website, you can get your customers more involved with your brand and give them a lot of ways to talk to you. For example, our loyalty solution, which includes a “white label” app, comes with all the things you need to get started off the box.
But you will need to do some custom integration to get the digital receipt from your POS into your loyalty programme. And, as with all customizations and custom integrations, you risk getting stuck in a spider web of clever solutions that, in the end, can stop you from making bigger updates, changes, and improvements. Your in-house developers will keep putting in hours to maintain and improve the solution.
From a customer experience point of view, the digital receipts from the different stores won’t be in one place. Instead, they will be in the different apps and loyalty programmes from the different stores.
3) Automatically sending digital receipts by email
With a standard add-on to your POS, you can easily send digital receipts to your customers’ inboxes through emails. You don’t need a separate app, login, or third-party vendor, but you do need to identify the customer at checkout and link the transaction to his or her email address.
This is an easy and cheap way to start using digital receipts. All you need is an add-on for your POS. All of the customer’s digital receipts will be in their inbox, so they won’t have to log in to any app or third-party vendor to access them.
This option, however, will require the customer to take an extra step at checkout (entering their email address) unless you already have a loyalty programme or another way to identify the customer.
Few verticals before making your decision. Some of the things that matter are the size of your retail chain, your segment, your target group, and how well you use digital tools.
Since 2014, Extenda Retail has used digital receipts that are linked to our POS. We’d be happy to tell you how to get started. Don’t be afraid to ask us to meet with you for free. We are happy to talk with you about how you could use technology to improve your shopping experience, such as by giving customers digital receipts.
Read More: Receipt Saver App: Cloud-Save Smart Receipts
