Christmas shopping at the local Crabtree & Evelyn gave a startling view of the brittleness of their cash register (point-of-sale, POS) system. When we stepped in, there was a small line. We looked around, smelled various items, and picked out a few (they're pretty expensive!). By the time we were ready to buy, there was a hefty line heading out the door. There was a problem with their internet connection so they were having to call the credit card companies to place a charge. This is silly.
When you charge high prices, you can expect your customers to want to use their credit cards. At some point, everyone will want to use plastic regardless of the amount. You should make it easy for them to give their money to you. Connection problems are not a new phenomenon and multiple layers of failover behavior should be standard at this point.
If the POS can't connect for whatever reason, the POS should save the charging side of the transaction for retry later, consider the sale complete, and let the customer go on their merry way. There is an issue of credit card fraud and unavailable funds, but the POS can easily do an offline preliminary check to make sure card itself is valid. With regards to stolen cards and insufficient funds, this has got to be a very small minority of transactions. For a retailer to lose money, these credit cards would have to be used during the small window of time that the connection is down. As long as everything seems like business as usual, the facade of real-time validation will still hold the same deterring power that it has when it's really there.
If the primary data connection goes down, there should be several alternatives. Their phones were working so a dial-up based backup connection is an obvious thought. There's a Starbucks in the same mall so a wireless backup connection is another thought. This could be a nice little add-on service for Starbucks or an innovative extra service for mall spaces. Retail space owners need their renters to do well to keep the rent coming in and to keep the area from seeming unlucky or unpopular so a service like this is very much in their interest.
While I was waiting in line, Crabtree & Evelyn lost at least three sales. Looking at the gift baskets and the lotions put back, they probably lost around $200 in sales in about 15 minutes. Who knows how much they lost that day or how much they lose each year because of connectivity interruptions. The $200 they lost in front of me could easily cover most or all of the cost of a cheap, slow backup data connection option for the year. Individual credit card transactions are very low bandwidth and don't need a special connection.
Starbucks, if your listening, start selling some data connection insurance to your retail neighbors. Everyone wins.
Posted by kstroke at January 5, 2006 02:38 PM