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Preparing for tourist season: 5 steps to follow

Customer experiences are an integral part of every business, whether they are intentionally designed or not.  During the summer months, as we leave behind uncertainty and rapid changes, it is time to think about how best to engage your seasonal customers.

Here are some tips to ensure that your business does not get left behind and that you continue to keep your customers happy by keeping up with the latest technologies:

Enable a personalised sales experience

Create an in-store experience your customers will not forget by using a tailored approach with your sales assistants and customer data. In-store experiences are created primarily by your front-line employees. Never lose sight of this fact. By using transactional data such as repeat purchases, cart value, and more, they can form relationships that make your customers happy and return frequently.

In order to avoid becoming irrelevant, businesses must ensure that the data they collect is unified and provides the customer with a higher level of personalisation. It is important to capture and correctly utilise data and understand what customers want, which ones are high-spenders, and where to send targeted invitations for events or specific offers for maximum returns.

Support smooth payment processes

During the summer months, it’s likely that you will see an influx of customers from other parts of the world visiting your store. It’s equally important that these seasonal customers feel at home when shopping in your brick-and-mortar store. A good way to do this is by enabling them to pay in their own currency when making a purchase, as well as accepting eWallet and contactless payment options.

As currency exchange rates fluctuate constantly, your customers might find it extremely frustrating if they don't pay in their own currency. Banks can sometimes charge them as high as 5% in foreign currency fees, which can add up significantly during a trip abroad. Despite the fact that the fee wasn't charged by your business, if you don’t cater for their needs, customers may not return.

Offer discounts smartly

Your customers would enjoy discounts, especially if they had a bit of fun obtaining them. Encourage social sharing for a discount in your physical store - it can be a product or even an area that you set up for Instagram selfies. This will make your store more appealing to different types of customers, from the younger generations to parents with children.

Cross-posting is also a great way to engage your followers on different platforms. Have your Facebook followers like your Instagram page, or vice versa. Using social promotion is the best way to measure your success since you can track how many times the discount is redeemed. With different codes for different platforms, you can even find out which social media network generated the most engagement.

Create immersive experiences

VR technologies can improve customer engagement for your business. Your customers can tour your store and sample your products using virtual reality. Furthermore, VR can be used to create original content, host virtual live events, and communicate your brand's story.

When it comes to bringing the experience into a physical store, smell has a strong impact on emotions and, therefore, how your customers spend. A new marketing strategy involving science called scent marketing is intended to increase customer loyalty. By strategically using fragrance at specific consumer touchpoints, you can create an instant emotional connection and boost sales.

Connect your physical and eCommerce store

Make it easy for your customers to move from your online store to your physical store by allowing them to purchase online and pick up their orders in-store. The same can be achieved by connecting your POS data to your CRM online to get a 360-degree view of your customer’s needs and spending habits.

Multichannel experiences offer consumers more convenience to shop in whatever way suits them, a wider variety of inventory available online and offline, and a better in-store experience.

Capitalising on data insights

It’s essential to gain a comprehensive understanding of your brick-and-mortar and eCommerce stores, as well as your business’s transactions. And our dedicated tool,  TRU Insight makes this possible with minimal effort.

With our top-of-the-line data insights software, merchants can identify trends, make changes, and drive value by providing a comprehensive dashboard that analyses all their customers’ transactional and behavioural data each month.

Learn more by contacting us today.

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Security is our top priority at Trust Payments and we strive to ensure that all data is kept secure at all times We keep all customer data safe with AES256 encryption, SSL Certificates, and a minimum of TLS1.2, between your website and our datacentres.

Our systems are scanned quarterly using the Qualys PCI Platform, an independent Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and approved vendors – Omnicybersecurity (UK) & Forgenix (US) – to ensure compliance with the security requirements of the card schemes.

We follow a number of rigorous security procedures on a daily basis including, but not limited to, continuous monitoring of our perimeter, dark web monitoring, and internal checks to ensure that CIA triad is maintained at all times.

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