The Case for Point of Sale Technical Support

“Tech support, how may I assist you?”

“Hey, yeah, I’m getting an error message on my point of sale, and my servers can’t close out tabs. It’s Friday night, I have a line out the door, and need this taken care of as soon as possible."

“I’d love to help you, but it looks like your support contract expired two years ago. You will have to renew the contract for me to help.”

Ever been there? Whether it’s prime business time or not, it is imperative that your point of sale functions. What happens when there is an issue? Call tech support, right? Wait a second, this is something that you have to pay for?

There are obvious costs associated with any support. Whether it is built in the pricing upfront, or contracted as a monthly or yearly renewal, a technician’s time must be accounted for and costs have to be covered. This all makes sense to business operators and owners, but they often think, why is it that my point of sale has an issue when our support is expired? I don’t want to pay for a yearly or monthly support subscription when I will only use it once! We’ve never had any issues till now.

All of the above thoughts are common. While it may seem unreasonable to have to renew a support contract to correct a single issue, consider the following: how important is it to maintain accurate financial records? How often do you leverage your business’ financial data when making critical decisions? If you are missing data, then obviously your financial records will not be accurate and further, your decision making will be skewed. Most companies take precautions to protect financial information. Some trust this responsibility to accountants, create offsite backups if an unfortunate event damages the business location, or securely send this information to a cloud-based system.

Why not take this precaution with the equipment that is charged with capturing the financial information, the point of sale? The point of sale tracks real-time inventory additions and reductions, costs per item, sale price per item, outstanding purchase orders, the list goes on and on. If this system is so vital to the functionality of a business establishment and imperative for accurate financial data generation, then a support contract appears minimal when compared to the cost of not having access to the information.

Take the cliché example of insurance. No one enjoys paying insurance. However, we all understand the vital necessity for certain types of insurance.

Find a support plan that works for your business. Speak with your point of sale provider. Investigate whether they will work with you to custom design a support plan that makes sense to you, makes sense for your business needs and ensures the protection of your financial captures through your point of sale.