Cashiers are the most important point of contact between your customers and your business. They are one of the last people your customers interact with so it’s important to have staff members that are properly trained in your point of sale system. You need to ensure that the checkout experience is smooth and representative of the image you want to put across. A friendly and efficient cashier will always leave a better impression on your customers. Not to mention the increase in throughput an experienced cashier can provide. In this article we’ll provide you with the top 5 tips to quickly, easily, and thoroughly train your staff on your point of sale. Then both your customers and employees can have a relaxed and optimized experience during checkout.
Start with a good POS
This is the single most important factor behind a well-trained cashier. Having a good base to start on is incredibly important when training your cashiers. Since they can only perform as well as your POS, you’ll need a good system. Outdated and cumbersome point of sale systems will always make your training experiences unpleasant and unreliable. That’s easily avoided with modern and user-friendly systems. Though teaching staff how to process transactions seems simple enough, having an easy to use POS is necessary to avoid mistakes. Not only will modern POS solutions make it easy to train staff, but the provider will usually include a staff training guide or on-site training with the cost of the system.
This can easily cut time out of your training requirements since you’ll have a professional teach both yourself and your staff how to operate the system in the most efficient way possible.
Do basic procedures
People in the workforce have a general idea about how POS systems work, but every system is different. Begin training by showing your cashiers the most basic procedure on the point of sale system: a straightforward checkout. By training your staff on the most simple transactions, you’ll build confidence before adding more complex processes to their training. Give your new staff a few hours on the POS to get familiar with what buttons go where and let them put through a few simple sales.
Use a training checklist
One of the easiest ways to ensure that your staff is fully trained on your POS system is to have a clear outline of what your expectations are. This removes any surprises in training for both your staff and yourself. While everyone has a different way of learning, you should have a standardized checklist of every procedure. Having a physical or digital sheet to reference when testing your cashiers will let you to find where they need the most work and where you can allow some more freedom.
The most basic training checklist should include information on processing transactions, returns, voids, and payments through the point of sale. This will obviously be different for every store and dependent on the permissions you grant staff on your POS, but all staff should have a strong grasp of the basic sale policies to keep your store running smoothly and efficiently.
Have reference sheets on tricky procedures
As with the training checklist, having reference sheets for common and more complex procedures is a great way to ensure that they process transactions accurately. Despite a manager’s best efforts, certain things slip through the cracks when it comes to training. This is where reference sheets come in handy. Once they complete POS training and an employee has successfully done all items on the checklist, giving them a point of reference for future questions removes the need for other staff to stop their own tasks to help new employees. This is especially important in an environment where new staff will work alone. Reference sheets should be a step by step guide for how to perform certain procedures in order to avoid mistakes. Some common reference sheets should be how to perform returns, voids, and how to deal with certain system errors.
Using these can not only save your staff in a pinch, it will also allow them to become self-sufficient.
Get new employees to shadow more experienced staff
As with many things, training isn’t something that you do through paperwork and step by step guides alone. Having new staff shadow experienced staff for a few shifts is a great way to give them real experience. This way they can more clearly understand the procedures they were taught. It will also let your staff understand the standard of quality you will expect from them.
Use role-playing to enact different scenarios
Hands-on experience in a controlled environment is a great way to solidify the skills you’ve taught your staff. Before you allow your staff to process transactions for real and paying customers, have your staff role-play different scenarios. This will remove some of the question marks in the process. It will also and allow your staff to present their new skills in a way that won’t affect your business. It is important to train staff on different scenarios such as angry customers, peak periods, and system or transaction errors. This real world experience lets them learn expectations and how to deal with situations they could encounter. Think of it as a test for your staff to ensure that your training has been comprehensive enough.
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