Your customers are likely concerned about using your touchscreens... Here are some operational tips to keep them clean and help protect your customers & employees alike.
Amid growing concerns about the spread of COVID-19, customers have become increasingly concerned about touching surfaces like touchscreens, be it a phone, tablet, or larger monitor screens. Understanding that businesses utilize screens for multiple essential services such as kiosks, ordering, loyalty programs, payments, tip captures, etc. it is important to take measures to keep your customers and employees safe. Most importantly, they know it is safe to shop in your business.
At Spendgo we deploy technology for many restaurants & retail brands and this is the advice we’re giving them:
- The safest option is to avoid asking customers to use a shared touchscreen at all. Encourage customers to order ahead on their own devices, minimizing the number of touchpoints inside your restaurant. If you use a platform like ToGo Tech or Olo you're likely already seeing a bump.
- If you have customers making orders in your restaurant take advantage of technologies that let customers order or pay at the table using their own devices. There are many platforms such as Ready, Up N Go, & OneDine which you can consider.
- If you support Apple or Google Pay it is a great way to limit physical contact in-store as well.
- In some instances, your operational setup requires customers to use a touchscreen. You can help them feel more comfortable by placing hand sanitizer next to the kiosk, POS systems, and payment terminals so customers can easily clean their hands before and after use.
- That said, hand sanitizer is like gold and sold out everywhere so here are some other options we’re seeing businesses use:
- Have employees be the only ones using the touchscreens. If you have a screen at the POS, then reposition it so that your team can operate it on behalf of the customer.
- Temporarily disable certain workflows like requiring a signature for credit card purchases or requiring a customer to select if they want an emailed receipt.
- Clean the screen after each use with a Clorox wipe or isopropyl alcohol wipes. Be careful not to use cleaning agents which will damage your screens. Also be aware that UV light sanitizers are much slower and can take a long time to kill a virus on a hard surface like a touchscreen… we don’t recommend them for businesses with a lot of customers sharing a touchscreen.
- Put out sheets of disposable wax paper for customers to use as a protectant when they tap the screen.
- In general, communicate to your customers the safety measures you’ve taken so they know it’s safe to make purchases with your business.
We hope these tips can help, but it is important that you continue to listen to what your government and health officials are telling you to do. We want to make sure everyone stays safe and is aware that these tips may not be right for everyone in every circumstance.