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IT
The view from the front line
When technology fails, staff are on the front line to apologize and ease customer frustration, placing them in a difficult position. A point of sale( POS) outage resulting in a till frozen midpayment leaves staff apologizing for something they often have no way of fixing and no real sense of how long it will take to resolve.
Inventory errors put staff in the same position, such as when a customer comes to collect a click-and-collect order only to be told it is ready at a different store, with no stock available at their current location. Similarly, a next-day delivery that does not arrive because the booking never synced internally means a different member of staff in customer service is left with the same lack of answers, and a promise the business made that it can no longer keep.
When short outages become high impact
The size of a business changes how much this matters. A large chain can usually absorb the cost of a fault in one store, or a glitch on one part of their website and call on an expansive IT support team while the rest of their operations carry on unaffected. Smaller retailers do not have that same luxury. One short POS outage on a Saturday might cost them a large share of that week’ s income, and a single poor experience for the customer is more likely to be the only interaction they have with that business that month.
Timing, as well as size, decides the extent of an outage. A five-minute lag on a quiet Monday morning is barely noticed, whereas the same five minutes during a weekend or a sale is a different situation entirely. While the outage itself does not get any longer, the number of transactions and customers that it affects rises sharply.
There is also a knock-on effect that outlasts the duration of the fault. The queue that builds up during five minutes of downtime does not clear the second the system comes back on.
As a result, staff are left working through a backlog while still handling the usual pace of retail and customer demands.
Beyond that, there is a reputational cost, given that a customer who has had a stressful experience is increasingly likely to mention it online, whether on social media or in a review. That is the kind of thing that can spread and have a lasting impact on a business. It will not matter to customers how long the site or till was down, what will stick is the negative customer experience.
Why recovery speed matters more than perfection
It is inevitable that there will be issues and faults from time to time; the question is how quickly a business recovers, which is where remote support can come into the equation.
Instead of waiting for an engineer to travel between sites, a technical team can connect to a device from wherever they happen to be and start resolving the issue directly. Whether you are a small or large retailer, the faster the fix, the smaller the cost, on both a financial and reputational basis. That speed of recovery is what keeps a five-minute fault from turning into a broken promise, a lost sale, or a customer who does not come back. The retailers who get this right are not the ones with the newest systems; they are the ones who have accepted that faults are inevitable and built their support around making sure nobody but the engineer ever notices. ■
Al Kingsley MBE www. netsupportsoftware. com
Al Kingsley MBE is Group CEO at NetSupport. NetSupport is a global software company with 37 years of experience serving education and corporate sectors. Headquartered in the UK with regional offices in the US, Canada, Germany, and Japan, the platform is used in over 120 countries by 21 million users, with a track record recognized through over 400 industry awards.
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