Best Practices to Combat COVID-19

Do’s & Don’ts for Retailers

This is a very challenging time for our community and Retailers. We want to help out people in keeping their businesses afloat and look for ways to minimize the potential impact

Firstly understand you and your staff’s safety is utmost important

If the staff at any point of time feel unwell, ask them to go home as we don’t want to facilitate the virus spreading. Then ensure that you are following all guidelines laid down by the govt for maintaining general hygiene and virus free shop environment. You can adopt ways like not letting more than 5-10 customers inside the store based on your shop space and no cluttering near the Billing Area. Use of hand sanitizers at several hubspots is recommended. 

Be Smarter in Handling Customers 

Remind your customers that you are open but keeping them at arm’s length. You’re making these changes for them. Some retailers have put tape on the floor to mark out 1.5m squares, and ask that only one customer stands in each. It may sound weird but it shows not only that you care, but you are also practical.

Make an Initiative to Sell Online

These days you can quickly get started with Selling your goods online with very less hassle. Even we at Hyper Drive have an Integrated Online Shopping Solution that is very simple and convenient to set up. Get in touch with our team to know more. 

Selling online is not only a great way to keep selling but also to keep the economy going. It may be a good idea to encourage your customers to shop online by offering incentives such as free shipping.

Use Bulk Emails and SMS to promote your store

Use the in-buit Bulk Emails and SMS features in your POS Software to send out details to your customers. Think of Promotional Offers and Loyalty Programs that can drive more sales to your store. Look for opportunities that can direct traffic into your store through smart buying options and packages for customers.  

Make them aware of the precautions you’ve been taking and the cleanliness parameters that you encourage while people buy goods from your store. This will give confidence to customers and in turn will result in more people preferring to buy from you and you’ll get more referrals. 

Adopt Efficient Methods for the Long-Run

Take advantage of this slow period to work on the areas of your business that you wouldn’t normally have the time to focus on.

You may not see many visitors for some time, so focus on things you can do in-store while things are quiet. Do a physical inventory count to make sure that all of your items are in check. Upgrade your POS, eCommerce, customer loyalty, accounting – get your business fit for when this passes. Evaluate your in-store processes and policies and take the time to update them if necessary. Strategies for the months ahead, so you can hit the ground running when business picks up again. 

Maintain Reorder Levels for Inventory

Since after the “stay-at-home” people are hell bent on “bulk buying”, it will become very difficult to keep a track of Inventory. Firstly sit down and analyze based on previous few days sales that what amount of stock is going in and coming out and accordingly plan for upcoming days keeping a certain minimum reorder level in place, where if you go below a particular limit for essential stock items you purchase new stock automatically.

All of HDPOS Products come with this functionality, where you can make use of an Excel Template to quickly upload stock values. Contact our team to know more. 

Grow your Social Media Presence

These days since everyone is sitting home, it gives an added advantage to your business if you have a good Social Media Presence. In your free time you could even come up with some informational content useful for your local community and spread it through social media that will indirectly help you get more customers. 

Our Integrated Online Solution also offers ways where you can connect Social Media pages to your website and then redirect them to your website to drive sales. Get in touch with us to explore more on this. 

We at Hyper Drive understand that there are millions of small businesses that have been thrown under the bus due to this countrywide shutdown, and all these small businesses are the foundation of our Economy. It will be very difficult to stay afloat and be profitable in this difficult time, so the only way out is that everyone helps each other and stand together to build each other up. We will be continuing efforts to contribute as much as possible. Please keep yourself subscribed to our Newsletter.