Talkin’ ‘Bout My Preparation! Are Your Stores Ready for Reopening?

Ok, so The Who might not have been talking about getting their admin list ticked off and, yes, it might not seem the most rock ‘n’ roll of subjects but, at Retail Assist, we’re huge fans of planning and preparation.

With non-essential retail stores re-opening in just a few weeks, there’s a lot to set up for both head office and store teams; when you’re finally able to welcome customers back inside your bricks-and-mortar stores, you’ll want to keep your tills working, your staff calm and minimise the chances of any errors occurring. However, with some store staff having been off work for several months, help to keep mistakes to a minimum with our Return to Trade Checklist.

This checklist has been written in collaboration with our customers and, in this blog, we share just a few of the insights. Want the full checklist? Download it here.

Liquid + Electrics = Not a Good Idea…

For our IT Help Desk, there’s no request too small or too silly. However, that being said, there can occasionally be instances that probably could have been avoided…

Over the past year, it’s been crucial to make sure that both store staff and customers have been kept safe although, whilst well-intentioned, an issue experienced by many customers over several sectors has been the demise of their Pin Entry Devices (or “chip and pin” machine). One particularly popular issue has arisen when cautious store staff, trying to meet COVID-19 safety protocol, have sprayed sanitiser directly onto the machine handset, which led to the liquid then seeping into the devices and causing faults.

Whether it was stupid, silly or just downright daft, we’ve all done something that, when on reflection, might not have been the best thing to do and although it might seem like an obvious thing to remind people of as, historically, liquid and electrics have never meshed together that well, it could be prudent to remind staff not to spray it directly onto the machines…!

Help is at Hand

Hopefully, come the morning of the 12th April, everything will run smoothly. But if your till just stops working or you can’t get the printer started, do you know who to call? Our IT Help Desk is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so no matter what your trading hours, help is at hand. By calling our service desk analysts, we can help to smooth out any tech issues, so make sure to remind store staff of the necessary numbers and protocol so that we can help to get any issues resolved quickly.

Back to Basics

In a similar way to cars that haven’t been driven for a while, sometimes there’s certain things you have to do to make sure your tech is ready for use again. Created in collaboration with many of our customers and end users, the Return to Trade Checklist, quickly and easily talks your store staff through everything they need to consider before opening their doors, making sure all tech bases are covered.

Even relatively simple things like making sure every member of staff has active log ins (and can remember their passwords!), clearing any clutter that surrounds the POS and dusting your store tech down will make a big difference to how smoothly everything runs when your stores re-open.

Our free Return to Trade Checklist is available for download here.