Normas Blog

There’s been a lot of buzz in the payments industry about EMV, also known as chip cards.

 

What is EMV?

EMV is a payment format that has been used for over fifteen years around the world. It will become commonplace in the United States in the next few years. The term EMV is named after the organizations that created the specifications: Europay, Mastercard, and Visa.

 

The distinguishing feature of EMV is that the card data resides in a chip rather than in a mag stripe, making it a more secure and ‘smart’ form of electronic payment.

 

Both the card/payment device and the card reader may require chip contact or it may be contactless. If it’s contactless, this means you can wave the chip near the reader and the data will be transferred.

 

Why is this important to you?

Visa and the other card networks have set a timeline for acceptance of EMV in the United States. NCR is already working on the issue so they’ll be well prepared in advance to meet the April 2013 deadline for supporting acceptance of chip transactions.

 

What is the most important date?

For our customers, it is October 1, 2015. On that date, Visa’s global Point of Sale counterfeit liability shift will be instituted in the U.S.

 

What does it mean?

Visa’s liability shift means that the party that is the cause of a chip transaction not occurring – either the issuer or the merchant’s processor – will be held financially liable for any resulting counterfeit fraud losses when a credit card is used. This is strong encouragement for all merchants to accept EMV transactions whenever possible.

 

 If a cardholder has a chip card but the merchant swipes the mag stripe instead, any cardholder fraud will be the responsibility of the processor, who in turn will pass that responsibility on to the merchant –  you!

 

What is being done?

NCR is committed to ensuring that Radiant Payment Services, CounterPoint SQL and Radiant Hardware and Peripherals are in place and ready for certification when this new card arrives. NCR will have plans in place to migrate you to the updated software and to new peripherals to ensure that you can accept EMV cards well before the liability deadline occurs.

 

Just another way NCR looks out for you.

 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

 

Running A Service Desk

Running a helpful and efficient service desk is key to spotting problems that may be developing between your business and your customers. Yet many service desks don’t have the basic practices and tools in place to identify and address potential customer relations problems.

 

Some key requirements for an A-1 Service Desk are:

 

·        The Right People

Even if requests are basic and repetitive, your staff needs to remain courteous and helpful. After all, the service desk is meant to provide service to your customers – often when the situation isn’t ideal. That’s why you want to make sure that your employees’ response is always positive.

 

·        Good Management Practices

Effective service desks follow consistent procedures to resolve customer requests and complaints. It is imperative that management lays out the procedures they want their staff to follow and the information they want them to collect. Besides written procedures (and don’t forget to train your staff on the procedures you expect them to follow), there should be a written form or – better yet – a computer template to gather necessary information for each incident.

 

You want your employees to “fix what they can” or escalate the incident to a manager if they either can’t “fix” the problem or aren’t authorized to do so. But no matter which it is, they must always be courteous and helpful to the customer.

 

·        Identify The Most Frequent Problems

It’s critical that you have some way to identify problem areas. With a template as mentioned above, you should be able to sort your data. It could be something as simple as an Excel or Access template. If you’re not sure how to proceed and need help, CCS’s support staff can help you create a template. Once you have a tool in place, you can find the answers you need, such as:

–        Are multiple customers returning the same item? Maybe your vendor shipped you a palette of lemons.

–        Did a piece of clothing shrink beyond wearability after one washing? Once might be the customer’s fault. But if you sold 12 and 6 are being returned for this reason, maybe it’s your vendor’s fault.

–        Did your customers find the item they bought at a much lower price at another store? Is it your policy to allow items to be returned for this reason?

 

·        Someone To Analyze Reports

It’s no good to simply track problems or how frequently they happen. You need a staff member to be able to identify the most common ones your service desk is seeing. Once you have the information in hand, you are ready to make a management decision on what needs to be done.

 

And – as always – remember that a happy customer is a return customer.

 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

A Strategic Thank You
 

If a customer has been gracious enough to sign up for your mailing list and has shared personal information with you, the least you can do is respond immediately.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a simple “thank you”, a welcome email or a gift certificate. Send something the same week that your customer signs up for your list. If you wait, the gesture loses all of its impact.

Here are some actions you can take to make responding immediately easy and effective:

1.      Decide what kind of media (postcards, letters, Emails) you’re going to send and have plenty on hand. Or if it’s an email, prepare a template. Make sure your employees know where to find the material or template so they don’t have to search for it.

2.      Keep the message consistent. Use a pre printed letter that can be personalized with a signature. Or create a message template that will always be printed on your letterhead or on a postcard. This is really a better solution because this way, your employees can add the customer’s name. Another benefit to using a template is that you will have control over what message your customer gets.

3.      Pick a standard time to send your follow-up responses. You could choose to have your shift closers send the messages at the end of each business day. Or you might want to do it yourself once or twice a week. What you decide to do will depend on your business. The point is to pick a time and stick to it every week. Once it becomes a habit, it will be a natural and normal part of doing business.

When you respond immediately, you are showing your customers that they are important to you. It’s a simple thing to do and will go a long way in the “customer satisfaction” department.

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

The Geezer Geek – You might be a has-been if…

Have you ever had those days when you feel old – I mean really old? I remember when I was first introduced to computers in the late ‘80’s (which may be before some of you were born) and had to be shown how to turn it on. Then I saw the following article written by Glyn Meek aka “The Geezer Geek” and realized how many of his “You might be a has-been if…” topics that I was familiar with. I would have really felt old if I hadn’t been chuckling so much. So whether you’re young or old, take a few minutes out of your busy day to read this completely unedited and non-plagiarized (I attributed it – right?) article. See if it doesn’t bring a smile to your face.

 

“I have always been a fan of Jeff Foxworthy and love his "You might be a redneck if …" type of humor. It came to my attention some years ago, during my inevitable aging process, that there is that sad moment when we geezers realize we no longer are the hot technologist on the block. Each new wave of technology, and in my time in the industry there have been a whole number of them, creates a whole new flock of technical has-beens. It takes increasing amounts of effort to keep up with these changes, and at some point in our lives we inevitably become Geezer Geeks and don’t bother to keep up at all. The other day, I was chatting about this with my business partner, showing him an old desktop PC I had, and he came up with "you know, you might be a has-been if you still have a PC with a 5 1/4" drive in it". (I actually had one in my closet with an 8" floppy drive as a separate device!")

 

With that in mind, for the rest of you to consider, "You might be a has-been if:"

 

·        you rave "I could have done this in Simula 67 in 8 lines of code …" and no one else has even heard of Simula 67 … and it only takes 3 lines of code in BabyJabber, which YOU have never heard of.

·        you don’t have ANY of the skills for job postings on Monster.com …

·        you dread the next new thing in hardware, development environments, and/or operating systems.

·        you don’t know how to ‘poke’ anyone on Facebook … and you almost filed for divorce when your wife told you she got ‘poked’ – twice – yesterday.

·        you haven’t iWorked on the next new iThing for iDays (a 64 bit unsigned integer) – and whatever DID happen to octal?

·        you know what Algol and Fortran actually stood for.

·        you don’t get the sardonic, technical, insider jokes on the new guy’s tee-shirts … "I widgie unchecked in BabyJabber" … everyone else LOLs, and you don’t know what that means either.

·        no one is impressed when you boast about once having shared lunch with Richard Hamming.

·        you know what DOS stands for and you still mourn the passing of CP/M.

·        you still keep a few blank punched-cards around in case of an emergency.

·        the first video game you ever played was ‘pong‘.

·        the first video game you ever programmed was on a CDC mainframe – a what?

·        you know that the new kids’ design/architecture isn’t going to work, but you don’t care enough to even enter the fight.

·        you remember "IBM and the seven dwarfs" and can name at least three of the dwarfs.

·        you used to work for one of the dwarfs!

·        you don’t know anyone who has even seen a tape-deck, mainframe, paper-tape reader or core-memory board.

·        the first computer you ever owned was a Commodore Pet or a Tandy TRS80.

·        you know what a Dodongo was.

·        you think a dial-up modem was too fast.

·        the Compaq ‘luggable’ actually counted as a portable computer to you, even though it was almost too large to even fit into an airplane overhead bin. Before take-off, flight attendants had to ensure that there were an equal number of ‘luggables’ on either side of the plane.

·        you think a cell phone is really for making phone calls.

·        strange pieces of paper that are 14"x11", have a row of holes down each side, and have alternating light-green and white stripes, can bring a tear to your eye.

·        you think tweet is the sound a small bird makes, and twitter is what idiot-teenagers do instead of talking coherently.

·        you remember C:\>

·        you know that Grace Hopper had nothing to do with Jefferson Airplane or with Easy Rider.

·        you have an 8-track player in your car and a cassette player in your office.

·        you think that ‘CD’ is a DOS command that means ‘Change Directory’.

 

P.S. Where DO you young programmers buy those baseball caps with the bill at the BACK of the cap?”

Glyn Meek, with 40 years of experience in the technology industry, has earned his curmudgeonly outlook.

 

Talk to you soon. ~Norma

Understand your overall business strategies and how they differ from tactics

If you want a cohesive marketing plan, the first step is to understand your overall business strategies and how they differ from tactics. Your strategy is an idea, a big idea. It’s the WHY. A great strategy is something that you can build your whole business around. It helps define and drive your business. It’s an idea your customers can rally around. 

A tactic is an action, something that you do. A tactic is HOW you are going to achieve your strategy. Sometimes the difference is difficult to understand, so here’s a real life example to see how strategies and tactics differ while at the same time working together.
 

Domino’s Pizza

In the early 1960’s Tom Monaghan had one small pizza joint in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It was sandwiched in between two major universities, the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. The dorm rooms, student apartments, and frat houses in those two giant universities were filled with students who were always getting a terrible case of the munchies. Now these people didn’t want the best pizza, or the tastiest pizza, they wanted the fastest pizza. They had the munchies and they wanted their pizza NOW. 

So Tom Monaghan came up with the strategy of having the fastest pizza delivery. Being the FASTEST was his big idea and he built his entire business around that strategy. In order to be the fastest delivery he had to make the pizzas faster. I don’t know exactly how he did it. Maybe he used pre-cooked crusts, installed more ovens, or gave his cooks better training. 

After the pizzas were made, he needed to deliver them faster. Maybe he hired more delivery drivers. Maybe he hired better drivers who actually knew the area, or drivers who knew how to use a map. All those actions were the TACTICS that supported his strategy of having the fastest pizza delivery. Strategy: fast. Tactic: More ovens. Tactic: Better delivery drivers. Those tactics grew out of his strategy which was being fast. 

His marketing tactics also grew out of his overall business strategy. The most memorable marketing tactic was his guarantee and his slogan. It’s so memorable that you probably know it even though it hasn’t been in use for decades… 

“Your Pizza Delivered in 30 Minutes or Less, or It’s FREE” 

That tactic, the guarantee and slogan, was the cornerstone of all the rest of his marketing efforts and it sprang naturally from his main business strategy. Dominos didn’t spend their money on better ingredients or fancy restaurant décor – they invested in more drivers, spent money on their great guarantee and on ads plastering that awesome slogan everywhere. When you’re clear on your strategies, the tactics start to flow naturally, effortlessly.

But you don’t have to limit yourself to just one strategy. Most retail businesses have between 1-5 strategies – any more than that and you start to lose focus.

Discovering Your Own Strategies

Don’t stress out about this! You can see the power in this concept and you want to grab that big idea right away. But it rarely works like that. A strategy is something that needs to be DISCOVERED. Take your time and think about it.
 

• ·     What is your big idea?
• ·     What do the customers need and want?
• ·     What big idea will really resonate with your customers? 

Understand that your strategies are there, waiting to be discovered. If you give them time and thought, they will reveal themselves to you. And then you can use them to create the tactics, to create the marketing plan, and to build your business. 

Talk to you soon. ~Norma

US Postal Service’s “Every Door Direct Mail”service

Last month, I published an article on using the US Postal Service’s “Every Door Direct Mail” service. It’s a great way to reach a broad segment of potential buyers in your area. But in order to be successful, what you send is as important as who you send it to. Will it be read or will it be tossed? To help you get started creating a piece that will generate customers, I’m sharing a short “to-do” list.

 

Target Your Prospects

Decide who you want to reach. Most stores draw a variety of shoppers – often with different wants or needs. Are you an appliance store? You probably wouldn’t want to target college kids unless you could make a living selling mini-fridges and toaster ovens. On the other hand, if you’re selling dorm sized furniture, bedding, or cool lamps, that might be the exact market you want a particular mailer to address. Knowing the audience you want to appeal to is the first step for in a successful Direct Mail campaign.

 

Understand the Objective of Your Mailing

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What do you want your prospects to do? Do you want them to…

 

• buy a particular item?
• come into the store?
• call for an appointment?
• register for a class?
• visit your WEB site?
• or?

 Be clear about the one single purpose the mailing has – the one action you want the prospect to take –   before you start preparing your mailer.

 

Create a Great Offer

Now isn’t the time to send an “image” or “branding” piece to tell your prospect who you are. Your mailer should offer a compelling reason for them to take the action you want them to take.

 

If you’ve done the first two steps – decided on your target prospects and what you want them to do – this step almost writes itself.

 

Want them to visit your WEB site? “All on-line orders receive a 15% discount!”

Want them to visit your store? “First 100 customers receive a free [fill in the blank]”

Want them to visit your store AND buy that over-stocked item? “60% discount on [fill in the blank] all day Tuesday”.

 

Once you’ve done your homework and made your decision on who, what, and why, you’re well on your way to writing and designing a powerful Direct Mail piece.

CounterPoint CustomerConnect(CC) is an excellent tool to complement "Door to Door".  CC is Email Marketing designed for the Retailer.  It facilitates the creation of high-impact messages to your CounterPoint Customers.  Changes to the Customer Database are automatically synchronized with CC.  A comprehensive administration dashboard and campaign manager are included to make CC easy to use.  To look into CC further visit our website for more complete product descriptions and our CC mailing archive.

 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

 

Marketing Ammo 

I recently received an email from Bob Negan of Whizbang Training that I want to share with you. It concerns getting your store recognized. He had some good information that I wasn’t aware of. This is what Bob had to say. 

“Here’s a refrain of frustration I hear over and over from retailers all across the country: ‘My store has been in this location for eight years and someone just came in and told me she didn’t know we were here!’ 

Getting the work out can be tedious – not to mention expensive. But fortunately, the US Post Office…has recently come up with a service that can help local businesses get the word out to everyone in their area. It’s called Every Door Direct Mail.” 

Bob goes on to explain how it works.           

• You don’t need a list of names and addresses.  Your mail piece will be delivered to every door on a particular mail carrier’s route. [You won’t spend money on rented mailing lists or postage on returned mail with bad addresses].
• It’s [inexpensive]. You send a standard flat mail piece for as little as 14.5 ¢. As an estimate, you can send nearly 5,000 pieces of literature weighing 3.3 oz or less for a little over $700.
• It’s targeted.  You can choose which mail routes you want to receive your mail and which you don’t. Many studies have shown that most of your customers live within 5 miles of your store. If you blanket the areas close to your store, you’re targeting your most likely customers.
• ·It’s easy.  Take your printed mail piece in bulk to the post office and they will do the rest. There’s no stamping, no labeling and no sorting.” 

Bob’s few words of caution: Make sure your mail piece is eye-catching and your offer is good. A bad mailer with bad copy and a bad offer isn’t going to bring in customers or help your reputation. 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

 

Cyber Criminals Attack SMB’s

Big Business has finally heeded the decades-long warnings from security experts and has invested enough in security to make it difficult, expensive and risky for cyber criminals to attack them.

So who are the victims now?   

Cyber criminals are looking for easier and safer ways to make money by attacking small and medium sized businesses according to ”Verizon’s 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report”. Verizon’s security research director, Wade Baker, says that cyber criminals are mass producing attack techniques and targeting small- and medium-size businesses (SMB’s).

 

What should smaller organizations do? Obviously, you don’t have the same level of resources as big business, but the potential cost of a breach means you can’t afford to ignore the risk either. In recent studies, the average organizational cost of a data breach was $5.5 million and the cost per lost or stolen record was $194.

 

The first line of defense is with a reliable, well trained support provider who will furnish you with the tools necessary to fend off cyber criminals. This includes – among other things – anti-virus software, host intrusion detection/prevention tools, firewalls, e-mail scanning and WEB security technology. They can give you as much (or as little) support as you require. And they can help you with the risks listed below.

 

A recent risk assessment study ranked the risks to small/medium sized businesses in the following order.

·     Vulnerability Management: You need to find and remedy software vulnerabilities on servers and desktops. Focus on critical systems first and be sure to include third party applications. Your support provider is a strong resource here.

·     Endpoint Protection: This refers to the tools listed above that your support provider can furnish and set up.

·     Strong Password Policies: You must rigorously enforce changing default passwords, not sharing passwords, setting up complex passwords that are changed frequently on a regular schedule. CounterPoint SQL retail software is your line of defense here.

·     Security Awareness: Workers must be trained on company security policies and common threats. They must know how to respond to suspicious activity and how to use computers safely. NOTE: social networks can be a major threat if introduced into your business environment and user access should always be forbidden in the workplace.

·     Access Control: Minimize the number of staff with administrative access. Easily done with CounterPoint SQL.

·     Denial-of-Service Mitigation Plan: This is imperative for any business that relies on the Internet.

 

No system can be made entirely impenetrable, but putting the procedures listed above into practice will go a long way in that direction.

 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

 

p.s. Earlier this month, CCS sent out more information to all who subscribe to our email notifications – on how to protect your system and avoid theft and potential credit card processor fines. There is a risk assessment audit that you can request for your CounterPoint system. Contact us at sales@ccscentral.com

 

FaceBook Timeline Configuration

March 30th was the date when Facebook switched to "Timeline". While there are a lot of good new features in Timeline, in order to take advantage of them you must make changes to incorporate them into your Facebook marketing strategy.

If you haven’t done so already, please read these last 5 areas (as well as the previous 2 listed in Part I) that retailers should update now.

Choose Your Top 3 Apps 

Your left-hand column apps tabs have moved and the content from you apps is now viewable via larger buttons at the upper right of your Page. Four apps are visible, but one is always the Facebook Photos app, so you’ll have to decide which other three apps are most important to you.  Rearrange the tabs so that the 3 most important apps are the apps you will always see. All of your apps can still be viewed by your visitors, but they will have to select from the drop down menu to see them.

 

The biggest disappointment about using Timeline is that you can no longer set one of your apps to be your “default landing page”. Now, all visitors end up one your wall instead of any special welcome page you created.

 

Update Your Business Information

 

Make sure your “About” section is completely updated. This information now appears on your wall in a prominent new position right below your profile picture. You’ll definitely want to show the correct location, store hours and contact information at a glance.

 

Some of you have been putting your WEB address in the phone number field so that it gets displayed. The choice is yours. If you have a great WEB site – maybe with an eCommerce (CPOnline) store, it is probably more important to send customers to your site than giving them a phone number. After all, you have that phone number on your WEB site – right?

 

If you do use your WEB address, make sure to include the entire address (URL) starting with http:// so that your customers will be taken to your WEB site when they click on it.

 

Add Some Company History

 

You can add “milestones” to your new “Timeline” account for things/events that happened in the past. Include things like:

·        The date when the business first opened. Maybe include a little bit of background on the “big 5” – who, what, when where, why.

·        Important Company events – maybe when you won an award (anything from a Chamber of Commerce award to a Little League sponsorship or a prize for wildest costume at the Street Fair). Anything that personalizes your company is always an asset.

 
Think Carefully About "Pinning" Posts

Even though Timeline lets you pin a post to the top of your page, make sure it makes sense to you. If you’re having a week-long event, it may make sense, but remember that Posts stay pinned for up to 7 days. And while it’s pinned, the rest of your layout – including newer posts – are shifted down “below the fold” where they may not be seen. Just make sure you think it through carefully.

 

Become Familiar with the New Admin Panel

 

This is a great tool. It shows you everything that has happened on your Page since your last visit. It works similarly to notifications, but it’s much easier to see and to manage. It’s a great way to get a snapshot view of what’s been happening on your Page.

 

And with that, you now have the 7 most immediate steps that will help you take advantage of Facebook’s “Timeline”. The rest is up to you!

 

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma

 

Facebook TimeLine Setup
 

March 30th was the date when Facebook switched to "Timeline". While there are a lot of good new features in Timeline, in order to take advantage of them you must make changes to incorporate them into your Facebook marketing strategy.

If you haven’t done so already, there are 7 areas that retailers should update now. I will start with the first 2 today.

Check Your Profile Picture
Your profile picture is the image that appears in the lower left area of the new Page header. This image is probably the most important one on the Page because it is the thumbnail image that appears in everyone’s news feed. Make this image something that most of your customers and prospects will quickly and clearly identify with your business. For most retail stores, a logo or a picture of your store works best.

Upload a Cover Image
This is the large image that will appear at the top of your page. It seems like this is the most daunting part of setting up the page for many people. But remember, this image will only be seen by those actually going to your page. It’s that profile image I described above that people will see the most often.

Don’t dismiss the cover image though. It is still very valuable in marketing your store.

One Very Important Caveat: Make sure you follow Facebook’s Cover Design Guidelines. This means you cannot do the following:

• Do not promote offers (20% off etc)
• Do not list product prices
• Do not give your contact information – including your WEB address
• Do not give a "call to action" such as "Tell A Friend About Us" or "Come in Today".
• Do not encourage visitors to interact with your page such as asking them to "Like Us" or "Share This"

You can either design your own cover image or you can hire someone to do it for you. There are specific size guidelines, and most photo editing software allows you to adjust your pictures at the pixel level to meet the requirements. I’ve listed some tools below that can help you create your own cover image. I could say it can be done without a lot of work, worry or expense – and it might be true. It simply depends on whether you’ve done this (or something similar) before or if you’re a "newbie".

    TOOLS:
         Pic Scatter – Can be used to create collage covers. 
        Timeline Cover Banner – Great for uploading pictures from your computer, editing and adding text.
        FaceItPages – Choose from included background templates or upload your own background images.
        CoverCanvas – Create photo collages, a text based illustration of your Store name, or a combination of both.
        J4 Timeline Covers – This app works from inside Facebook and lets you create collage covers from your Facebook Photo Albums.

Tomorrow, I’ll cover the additional 5 areas that should be addressed first.

Talk to you soon.  ~Norma