The retail business can be both rewarding and unforgiving. With your growing popularity, expect an influx of customers and passersby to visit your store and buy items. When you have heavy foot traffic in your store, it could mean both things – you are getting successful and struck gold, and the store itself collected random debris and dust. If there are too many people, it’s almost impossible to keep it clean and be accommodating for them.
Cleanliness of the store is one of the biggest factors for its popularity, and when the store is dirty, the customers will feel like it’s unprofessional and unwelcoming. While it is indeed challenging to manage the store and keep it clean, it is possible to minimise the headaches for both your employees and customers. These simple habits can save them and maintain the functionality of all the equipment of the store.
These are the easy habits you can teach your employees:
- Clean as they go. Sadly, people do not return items in their proper shelves after looking at them or testing the items, and the people who are actually interested to buy it will end up pestering your employees to find it for them. It’s important to keep these items in their proper shelves and organise them whenever it is needed. While it’s not really an easy task, it’s highly appreciated by the customers. Maybe keep your employees in high spirits by rewarding them with every job well done!
- Clean the card readers. Customers get angry when their cards get rejected a couple of times only to work after five swipes – it will give your employees emotional distress and a headache for customers and even embarrassment as well. No one wants to experience those in a place of shopping and work. In order to avoid this kind of inconvenience, you must instruct your employees to clean it once a week, or often during the busy season to avoid these occurrences. There are cleaning cards that can help you clear out the dirt and debris of constant use.
- Bill acceptors should be in top condition. Aside from emptying this, you also have to clean up the slot once or twice a month to make sure it doesn’t malfunction. Since money has been passed around and has been to too many places, it’s one of the dirtiest things people carry. By making sure that you clean the acceptors, you won’t be able to face angry customers since their bills are declined or the machine malfunctioned. It will save you both the time and energy.
- Thermal printers should be clean. Aside from making sure that the paper and the ink is replaced whenever empty, it should always be clear of dust and debris. Problems could arise from a dirty printer – from machine malfunction to paper jams, these could easily be avoided by keeping it clean after using it for a while. The best way would be cleaning it twice a month.