Green Receipts: Paperless That Gives More
How these receipts can get you & your customers more
With the rise of the technological age, we’re seeing people opting for the convenience of the digital world. Most of today’s commerce platforms can be found online, from video streaming to online shopping. For brick-and-mortar business owners, this may seem like a possible loss of customers to other avenues of buying. Fortunately, there is a new way to keep customers on returning to your store, and it surprisingly starts at the end of a transaction: green receipts.
Green receipts are the new digital option to send receipts through text messages or e-mail, cutting down on paper and ink costs as well as benefiting businesses through data collection.
How It Works
Green Receipts function like a receipt that one would obtain from an online marketer. When a customer reaches the checkout counter, the cashier gives the customer the option to receive a physical or digital receipt. This can also be done through a prompt on a screen if the store utilizes a screen to complete transactions (i.e. credit card transactions).
Upon choosing the digital receipt, then the cashier enters in the e-mail address or the phone number of the customer into the POS software. E-mail receipts usually provide the entire receipt, while a text message will procure digital receipts that can be looked at through a link within the text message.
When the customer provides their information, the e-mail or phone number gets inputted into the retail software and the opportunity arises for your cashiers to ask the customer to opt-in for future marketing. This email, as well as any other customer data collected, goes into a CRM database for businesses to access and keep for future transactions and e-mail marketing opportunities.
Customer Satisfaction
With the right POS software, this process can greatly increase a customer’s satisfaction during a transaction, as well as give the customer a more convenient way to access their receipts.
Green Receipts are a great option for customers who frequent the business that they are receiving the digital receipt from. For future transactions, if the customer pays with the same credit card, the information can also be easily pulled up to create an even more convenient experience. It also saves the hassle of waiting for receipts to print out and avoids possible paper jams or other problems that may arise from tradition paper receipts. Additionally, customers many times prefer to have paperless receipts for their own convenience. It centralizes the location of their receipts to one place while being easy to sort and search through when they need it for their personal finances. Whether it be returning an item to the store or for tracking bill-payments and possible fraudulent charges, digital receipts benefit the customer as a way to track their expenses through a quicker and more convenient system.
Business Benefit
With the many benefits that customers experience through green receipts, the benefits for businesses are tenfold. While a business benefits by keeping up with the modern times and providing customers a choice for their own personal preference, it also provides the retail business with a new way to receive and track customer information and spending.
By using the digital receipts through point of sale software, retail stores can obtain information that customers would otherwise may not be comfortable sharing in other traditional settings. Asking customers to join an e-mailing list separately can be a long process that most customers decline to take part in as they see it as a benefit to the company rather than for themselves. On the other hand, asking customers to join an e-mailing service that provides them a convenient way to receive their receipts shows the customers the benefit on their side first, which persuades more customers to give their e-mail or phone number.
Business can then use this data to track the expenditures of different customers and target their e-mail marketing to better suit the customer’s spending preferences. Promotional materials can better suit the customer, and it provides the business a way to turn one-time buyers into returning customers.
