Transforming Thrift: How RCS and NCR Counterpoint are Empowering Salvation Army's Mission
The Pain Points
The Salvation Army, a well-known thrift retailer with locations across the US, was facing several challenges with their aging point-of-sale hardware and software including:
- Credit card processing
- Slow sales transactions
- Lack of reporting and analytics
- Poor data-capturing capabilities
- Cumbersome accounting interface
They were looking for a modern POS system to streamline their operations while implementing new technology for better tracking and reporting of their data.
The RCS Solution
The Salvation Army Southern Territory partnered with RCS to implement NCR Counterpoint, which successfully resolved their hardware and software issues and enabled them to process credit card transactions more efficiently. Counterpoint was also able to reduce the number of steps for each sales transaction, resulting in a quicker and more enjoyable checkout experience for their customers.
Did you know?
The Salvation Army is the largest non-governmental provider of social services in the United States.
RCS Thrift Enhancement
With robust training during implementation by the experienced consultants at RCS and their dedicated project manager, Salvation Army was immediately able to automatically apply discounts with the RCS color rotation enhancement. This RCS custom enhancement was built specifically for the thrift industry and enables customers to define multiple discounts by color, day of the week, for VIP customers, planned promotions with a start and end date, and/or for a specific item or item category. The Salvation Army currently utilizes this feature every Wednesday for their weekly sale across all locations and for their monthly discounts based on tag color.
By taking advantage of and implementing the RCS Thrift Package, which included Color Rotation, Round-Up, and KPI Reporting. This allowed The Salvation Army to track their inventory quantity and price points, adjust them at the beginning of the color rotation, and zero them out with a physical count at the end of the rotation. They also printed barcode tags for inventory that indicated the color week, which helped expedite the checkout process. RCS Round-Up offers customers the opportunity to round up their final charge and donate to a good cause.
Customer Loyalty
Previously, Salvation Army struggled to capture customer data at checkout so they could embrace a loyalty program which they knew was resulting in a lot of lost opportunities. Additionally, limited customer data resulted in limited marketing opportunities – without the proper outreach, their promotions were not able to achieve the scale they had hoped.
With the move to NCR Counterpoint, they were able to embrace a robust loyalty program as part of the native integration and can now efficiently reach their customers with targeted email campaigns based on purchase history. NCR Counterpoint’s built-in loyalty program enhances the customer experience by allowing the cashier to look up past purchases, reprint receipts, add personal notes, offer birthday promotions, and more.
A Quick View of The Salvation Army Southern Territory
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Reporting, Data, and Analytics
By implementing Counterpoint Point of Sale, Salvation Army is now able to access real-time, centralized reporting. This enabled them to access significant amounts of new data with new insights that will help them make strategic business decisions. Now they can react efficiently to trends, analyze sales, and better plan for future growth. Additionally, they also are now using the email report scheduler which sends important reports to managers’ emails first thing in the morning and at critical intervals throughout the day. Allowing managers to react quickly to what the data is telling them or to access support if there was an issue.
The Salvation Army also installed new, top of the line NCR Hardware and found that the advanced register touchscreens have been easy to implement and easy to use for the cashiers, the customer checkout is speedy, cash management processes are streamlined, and label printing is faster than ever before. Salvation Army can now also utilize Counterpoint in other areas of their business besides retail stores, and the reporting and real-time data capabilities have been exceptional. Overall, the implementation of Counterpoint was a success, and it helped them drive sales, improve operations and enhance customer experience significantly.
The Opportunity
As a thrift store, there are some unique obstacles when it comes to attracting customers and converting sales. However, there are a lot of amazing opportunities for growth because of the unique offering. From one-of-a-kind products to hidden treasures, the thrift industry is always exciting and changing. By offering an environmentally sustainable choice and alternative to fast fashion, many customers are not specifically searching out thrift stores for more products than ever before. Join the thousands of customers who rely on Retail Control Systems and NCR Counterpoint as their point of sale to efficiently and effectively operate their businesses to their fullest potential. Learn more about how RCS caters to the thrift industry or contact us for a demo!
Let Us Boost Your Retail Efficiency
Are you looking for a revenue-boosting retail point-of-sale system and technology? Contact us today and a solution advisor from RCS will arrange a personalized demo for your retail business.