POS Service and Support
Point of Sale Systems | Buyer's Guide
Consider what happens if your POS system goes down. Chaos? Closed
doors? A blizzard of hastily-scrawled receipts? While it does not
happen often - most reputable POS systems have very good overall
reliability - shutdowns can lead to unhappy customers, lost revenue,
and considerable headaches. The support policies of a POS vendor can
easily determine whether you should do business with them or not.
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You should get an in-depth explanation of how
your potential vendors handle support. Most will diagnose
problems over the phone first -- many basic problems can be
solved this way. Some vendors have telephone support available
24 x 7, while others are available only during business hours.
Restaurants should lean towards vendors who do have 24 x 7
support, since their busiest times tend to be outside normal
business hours. |
For problems that can not be solved over the phone, there are
different options for escalation. Local vendors usually have field
service technicians who can come to your location and make repairs.
If they can not fix the problem on site, they should be able to
provide loaner equipment that can keep your business running.
Usually you can get a guarantee that site repairs will happen with
24 hours.
Some vendors do not have field technicians - they may not even
have an office in your state. Often, they will set up direct
Internet access to your system, so they can dial in and make changes
remotely. Others will send you a replacement component as soon as
you call in with a problem, then have you send the broken component
to them for repair. If you have many terminals, this is probably
fine - you will get your new parts within a day or two. For smaller
business with only a few terminals, losing one for two days may not
be an option.
Vendors provide widely varying guarantees. Some provide parts and
labor for one year; others include free phone support for that first
year, as well. Many charge per-incident for calls outside of
business hours. Some charge for annual support contracts, and prices
range from a cheap $200 to over $1000 per year. In short, there is
not much consistency in how vendors structure their support plans.
This can make it hard to compare one to the next, but make sure you
do: POS systems are too critical to day-to-day business to risk
underbuying support.
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