Friday, July 1, 2022
How can merchant level salespeople tailor vertically focused POS solutions to the unique requirements of merchant clients and prospects?
Today's small and medium-sized business owners increasingly want technology tailored to the needs of their specific industry. This makes perfect sense, because the solution that is best for a restaurant is not going to be a perfect match for a daycare or barbershop. In response, salespeople have evolved to become business consultants that meet with prospects to understand their needs and then help tailor a solution that meets those needs.
Clover is an ideal platform for this consultative approach because it includes built-in business management software tailored to specific verticals, such as table-service or counter-service restaurants, as well as an open third-party app store that allows each merchant to customize their overall solution and experience.
How is Clover leveraging the BNPL trend and what impact are you seeing on BNPL providers, merchants and consumers?
At Clover, we are working to help small business owners understand how BNPL may impact their business, how to access and enable BNPL services in a simple manner, and how to educate customers about how BNPL works.
Currently, Clover has relationships with multiple BNPL providers—including Bread and Synchrony—and we are working with these providers to enable our clients to enable these payment alternatives in both card present and ecommerce environments. Understanding that each small business has unique needs, our goal is to provide multiple options for small businesses so they can use their Clover relationship to connect with the BNPL provider that best fits their needs.
How do Clover's self-attended features solve for staffing shortages, and what other strategies do you recommend for helping to mitigate this challenge?
Staffing continues to be a primary issue for small business owners. As businesses adapt to work with fewer staff on-site, operating efficiently becomes critical. With Clover, we offer specific functionality that can help business owners streamline operations, automate tasks, and ultimately save time managing their back office so they can spend more time serving customers. A few of those capabilities include self-service, back-office and inventory management features.
How can merchant service providers help their customers deal with supply chain challenges and uncertainties?
While supply chain issues can be tough to combat, one thing we recommend to all retailers is to offer gift cards to their customers. It sounds simple, but if a business is out-of-stock of a specific item, having a gift card available at checkout, or online, can be the difference in losing or closing a sale. That rings especially true during the holidays, when 33 percent of consumers say they would purchase a gift card if a particular item was not available.
Digital commerce played a significant role in keeping businesses going during the pandemic. How can service providers continue to build on that momentum now?
Digital commerce has never been more important for small businesses than it is today. As larger competitors continue to invest in digital selling, it is imperative that small business owners think like a big business. One way to do so is to accept payments across both physical and digital channels. This can mean everything from selling directly online, to offering services like buy online pickup in store, curbside pickup and even in-app mobile ordering.
We've seen a range of use cases by industry that reflect how businesses are operating in a more digital world. For food services, we are seeing things like online ordering, delivery service integrations, reservations and digital menus. In retail, we are helping merchants synch their physical locations with their digital storefront and providing integrations for multiple digital storefront providers. Businesses in the services industry are doing things like supporting digital appointment settings. And more merchants are leveraging the opportunity to communicate digitally with customers through social media connections.
Contactless payment methods continue to scale, yet some SMBs are afraid to take the leap. How can merchants upgrade to cost-efficient, accessible NFC-enabled payments acceptance?
Contactless payments are certainly continuing their growth and doing so by expanding beyond traditional NFC-enabled chip card acceptance. At Clover, all of our contactless payment options can be enabled at no incremental cost to the business. These include:
Accepting multiple forms of payment allows the SMB to let their customers pay in the manner that is most convenient for the customer. 
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