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5 Ideas for Successful Remote Shopping and Customer Pickup Services

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As more areas of the country move into Phase 1 of re-opening the economy, you may be able to offer remote shopping and curbside (no contact) pickup.  While you may already have a way to hold items for pickup by customers, moving completely to the “take out” model of business requires you to make changes and scale your processes.  Here are 5 ideas to improve your customer experience:

1. Accept Online and Advance Payments

Customers paying online or by phone before coming for their pickup dramatically reduces the in-person interaction needed to complete the sale. This is safe for your employees and your customers.

  • Adding a shopping cart experience to your website is not a simple process; check with your web developer and verify they have the experience to create a secure, easy to use flow for your customers.
  • If adding a shopping cart experience to your website is not feasible in the short term, you have alternatives:
    • Check with your current card processing service; many offer payment portals that can work well in this situation.
    • Spin up a separate online store using a turnkey solution, like Shopify, to which you can upload inventory and product information
    • Create an online payment account via services like PayPal or Venmo (make sure you have or create a company-specific account)
  • Remember that you must still comply with PCI regulations.  Make sure employees know that when taking credit card information, they should not write down or otherwise record the information expect to put it into the POS or card processing systems.

2. Offer Video Shopping Appointments

Allow customers to schedule video shopping appointments, during with a member of your staff can walk the store and help your customers pick out items.

  • Use a secure video meeting tool. If you use Microsoft Office 365 or G Suite, you already have access to video meetings via Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, respectively. Employees should NOT be using personal accounts, email addresses, or phone numbers to setup or run these sessions.
  • Roll out a scheduling tool that lets customers pick from preset, available times.  Bookings is a free tool included with MS Office 365.  Tools like Calendly integrate with both G Suite and Office 365 services.
  • Get a few tripods with phone/tablet holders.  This will allow a single employee to manage the camera while displaying merchandise. It also makes for a “steady” shot and better shopping experience.

3. Live Chat with Customers

Give your customers an easy way to get in touch with you once they are on your website.

  • Live chat is an inexpensive way for customers to communicate with your team.
  • Most live chat solutions allow your staff to answer questions and transfer the conversation.  Staff working from home can cover the live chat service and answer most customer questions. The chat can be transferred to in-store staff as needed.

4. Create a “Service Desk” for Customer Questions

Going beyond live chat, let your customers interact with you however they want, when they want.  At the same time, you can enable staff working from home to support the team working in-store.

  • Setup a cloud-based service desk phone system that allows multiple team members to answer calls, text messages, and voice messages.
    • Employees sign in as ‘agents’ and can indicate when they are available / not available to answer calls.
    • The system will route calls to an available ‘agent’ in a round robin basis or other priority that you configure.
    • Using a “soft phone” application, your employees access the system via computer or mobile device; their personal phone numbers and information remain private.
  • Setup a shared inbox to allow your staff to respond to, and manage, email communications.
    • More than a distribution list, a managed shared inbox lets your team assign emails and discussion threads to employees and track their work and progress.
    • Using the shared inbox, employees’ personal information and individual work emails remain private.
    • Employees can connect/disconnect to the service as needed to cover shifts

5. Measure Customer Satisfaction

Follow up every sale with a thank you email and solicit customer feedback.

  • Cloud-based customer satisfaction (CSAT) tools let you embed one-click feedback questions into your email templates. These often use familiar green, yellow, and red icons to indicate satisfaction levels.
  • CSAT tools can also solicit comments. These comments can be used to identify and resolve customer issues, as well as generate testimonials for your web site and marketing efforts.
  • More advanced CSAT tools can also ask a “Net Promoter Score” question, so you can measure how many of your customers would recommend your business to others.

A Final Note: As you implement these (or other) ideas, procedures, and technologies, remember to take care of your “back office” and employees. Initiating or improving your customer pickup services means new and changed processes. You may also decide to change roles. For example, some stores dedicate one team member per shift to process online payments as a way of managing access to the tools and information.  Take the time to train your staff and make sure they are comfortable with the changes.  Also, solicit their feedback and ideas. They probably have suggestions that will help you impress your customers.

Please contact us for a free Response and Recovery Assessment. We are happy to discuss ideas and solutions, and to assist with getting the technologies and training in place.

 

Email Encryption is Not Compliance

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Security Key
While providing a reasonable level of protection from inappropriate access to your data, the built-in encryption is not sufficient to meet information privacy regulations. Laws such as the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”), and industry regulations including the Personal Card Information (“PCI”) standards require more than data encryption.

Privacy laws and regulations typically include three components:

  1. Policies and procedures that, when followed, provide appropriate data protections
  2. A means to monitor compliance, with the ability to detect and mitigate potential violations of the policies and procedures
  3. A defined response and resolution procedure in the event of a breach

As explained in our eBook, Email Encryption in Google Apps, Technology can support the implementation of these three components, but does not offer a full solution on its own.

Contact us to assess your email encryption needs and to define an affordable solution.

 

4 Questions to Ask When Selecting an Email Encryption Solution

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Email Lock
Once you determine who within your organization should be using email encryption to secure sensitive and protected information, you need to select from sea of vendors all claiming to be the “leading” provider.

Here are four (4) questions to ask when selecting an email encryption solution

1) Does the solution include a hosted, shared email encryption network?

Encrypting every email is hard, expensive, and does not accommodate the way most of us work. Using passwords and accessing portals are extra steps that take time and can create frustration. A shared email encryption network ensures that 100% of emails sent within the network are secured without any additional actions required by the sender or the recipient.

2) Does the solution offer policy-based encryption filters?

Most encryption solutions relying on users to trigger encryption by clicking a button or putting a tag into the subject line.  Even if users understand every scenario that warrants encryption, they are likely to miss a few along the way. Solutions with policy-based encryption filters scan and automatically encrypt messages that contain sensitive information. The best solutions provide standard heuristics for common regulatory requirements and let you create custom policies to meet your business’ specific needs.

3) Is the solution easy to use?

Email is a business tool, and email encryption is no different. Ideally, the solution should be easy to use for sender and recipient. Difficult processes result in mistakes, compliance breaches, lost productivity, and users circumventing the system. Easy to use solutions foster adoption and compliance by automatically encrypting message, decrypting inbound messages at the gateway, and ensuring that replies and forwards get encrypted as well.

4) Is the solution provider awesome?

Choosing an email encryption provider is a long-term commitment and the lowest price is not always the best deal. Make sure your provider is trusted by others in your industry. Check to ensure their infrastructure has certifications and accreditations, such as SysTrust/SOC 3 or PCI Level 1. Make sure the solution can be deployed quickly and that your provider supports your deployment technically and with user training. Verify that your provider will support you on an on-going basis and minimize the resources required from you and your team.

 

 We offer multiple email encryption solutions. Contact us to discuss your needs and explore the solution best for you and your business.

 

Moving to the Cloud: Regulatory Compliance

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Green_GaugeThis post is the seventh in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

Moving to the cloud often entails more than switching to an email service or spinning up a some cloud-based storage and servers.  For many businesses — including Small and Mid-Size Businesses (SMBs) — regulatory requirements place demands on IT systems and security.  And, while these requirements impact in-house and cloud solutions, moving to the cloud requires planning.

The most common regulations for SMBs relate to consumer (customer) privacy:  HIPAA, which protects personal health information, and PCI, which protects personal and credit related information.  Many SMBs, however, must also meet the requirements of Sarbanes/Oxley, FINRA, SEC, and various state regulations.

The solution:  Integrating Solutions.

Fortunately, the tools and systems exist to provide compliance with data security and privacy regulations.  Cloud vendors are creating environments and the management controls necessary for customer regulatory compliance and certification.

The challenge is to make sure that all of the pieces work together.

  • Message Archive/eDisovery:  Manages retention of email as official business records and provides the eDiscovery and audit tools necessary to meet federal subpoena requirements.
  • Message Encryption: Encrypts email at the individual message level based on content and rule sets, requires users to authenticate before accessing the message, and prevents forwarding.
  • Two Factor Authorization / Single Sign-On: Provides identity management services and audit trails beyond core products in order to meet regulatory or policy requirements 
  • Third Party Encryption:  Encrypts data in the browser or client before transmission to the cloud, providing a second level of encryption prior to the encryption provided by the cloud vendor.  In the event of a vendor data breach, the exposed data would be encrypted.

These types of solutions, and others, provide cloud environments with the capabilities to meet regulatory requirements.  Vendor contracts and policies should still be carefully reviewed for any terms and conditions that threaten compliance.

And remember, no vendor can ensure compliance.  Compliance exists when the technology meets the technical standards and is used in accordance with policies and procedures that meet the regulatory intent.

Next Post in the Series:  Internationalization

Previous Post in the Series:  Integration with Legacy Systems