The most important part of retail is the moment you make a sale. If there’s no transaction, then all that work goes to waste. But, how to practice cashiering?

With the importance of a well-trained cashier, it’s apparent that you need to invest in your employees and make sure they’re knowledgeable on all aspects of customer service.

Retailers have two ways of approaching cashiers:

1. The first is how Walmart does it: employees spend their whole shift behind the register, ringing customers as they come in and staying at their desk until told to leave.
2. The second way retailers use it is: to have the sales associate call customers up when they need help.

Nowadays, these associates may not even be behind a desk but rather ring them on their mobile devices while walking around. They need to be trained as cashiers because it is essential that your store provides excellent customer service and makes sales.

How to Practice Cashiering? What should you teach your cashiers?

1. Customer service abilities

If you’re like most people, who don’t have time to cover every customer service skill for cashiers, here are the ones that need to be addressed.

In the service industry, a smile is everything. A cashier needs to be polite and friendly with every customer who walks through their line.

Michael Connolly, an owner of a hardware store in New Jersey with over 30 years experience and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, says that he prefers to hire cheerful employees rather than those with excellent skills. After all, when you’re working at a retail establishment, it is essential for customers to feel like they were well taken care of.

Greeting customers is a tough job, but the cashier has to make your customer’s shopping experience an equally enjoyable one. They need to answer any questions and help direct them around the store.

Your cashier will be the last person to speak with a customer before they make their purchase, which is why they need to ask if any additional items need purchasing.

Asking cashiers to make sure that customers are satisfied with their purchases is easy to upsell. Click To Tweet

For example, if a customer doesn’t find the perfect card in the store, ask them about it and offer one of your cards at checkout.

Church’s Chicken, the popular fast-food chain, provides customers with a script to follow when ordering.

Managing angry customers is another challenge for many stores, so having well-trained cashiers with active listening skills is essential. Cashiers should know how to diffuse situations and turn your customer from being an unhappy one into someone who will leave satisfied.

2. Policy of the store

Cashiers are critical to your success, so make sure they know your store’s policies inside and out. If you don’t do this, it will cost you a lot of money in discounts or fraudulent returns.

In addition to keeping your cashiers on the same page with store policies, it’s also essential to know that they have a certain amount of autonomy. If you’re a fantastic boss, and someone brings in their purchase at closing time (or even if there is some last-minute sale), don’t be afraid to make exceptions.

3. Actual use of the software/processing the sale

As a business owner, you will need to know how to practice cashiering and train your cashiers to use the POS hardware and software. They’ll be responsible for processing sales or returns.

• Accessing the software
• Starting a sale
• Searching for customers and previous purchases
• Product research
• Starting a return
• Returning an item without a receipt
• Accepting mobile and credit card payments
• Giving change and checking for counterfeit money are two aspects of dealing with cash.
• Making a check payment
• Correctly reloading the receipt paper
• Gift card processing
• Using promotions

4. Packaging

Costco is famous because they don’t offer their items in bags. Instead, they use carts to feel like they are getting something special. There’s much more to it than just the price.

Your cashiers are going to be the ones who need to know how and when it’s appropriate for them, as a company employee, to help package your products. They must also have an understanding of branding.

5. Using the POS 

Your cashiers will need to know how the different parts of your POS work, and you must make sure they are comfortable with each one. You may want to give them a tutorial on closing out registers or running sales reports.

Some businesses have their cashiers close out the register at the end of a shift. This is not always practical, but it can be helpful for some companies.

How to Educate Your Cashiers?

1. Make use of any training resources provided by your vendor.

One of the first things you should do is sit your new cashiers down with any training resources your software vendor may offer. This will give them a good idea of adequately using it and what they can expect from their job.

If you’re looking to help your employees learn, try this approach. It will make things easier for them and ensure they know what’s necessary.

2. Make it simple for them to remember PLUs.

For cashiers in grocery stores, knowing the codes for all of your products is a real-time saver. It’s helpful to give them flashcards or sheets during off-hours to memorize what items are on which code.

3. Practice!

You can’t be too careful when it comes to cashiers. Get them some hands-on experience next time you hire one, whether that’s walking them through a practice sale or two on an empty register.

It’s also important to show them how it feels when a customer brings back an item, and you have to return their money. Click To Tweet

4. Allow them to shadow your top cashier.

Once you have taught your trainees the basics, please put them in front of an authentic cashier to experience how unpredictable and challenging being an employee at retail can be. Cashiers constantly face new situations throughout their shift, so it’s important to observe or participate in these moments.

The best cashiers can explain how the POS system works, which helps explain its policies and technical uses. They can always figure out what needs to be done when a customer wants something or returns an item.

5. Begin them during off-hours (with a shadow)

When it comes to cashiers, the only way to get better is by working with experienced ones. So, set up your newbie at off-peak hours and let customers know that they are brand new so people will be patient.

When you first start, it’s essential to have someone shadow the new cashier for a few sales. This way, they can make sure that everything is going smoothly and, if not, what needs fixing right away.

6. Train your employees on customer service.

If you’re looking for more information on training your retail employees, we have results about it. But here are some tips that will work with cashiers:

Role-playing is a perennial favorite for customer service training because it allows you to create a low-stakes hands-on learning environment. In the words of Bob Phibbs, a retail expert,

“The more role-playing your team has under their belt, the less likely they’ll sell from their et, give bad customer service, or be stymied by some of the more margin-improving retail sales techniques like adding-on.”

Ultimately, customer service skills are best learned through experience.

It is essential to teach your employees how to interact with customers in the cashiering industry. Click To Tweet

This means teaching them small talk phrases and having a conversation without being too creepy about asking for help from past interactions.

7. Set attainable objectives.

Many older employees never learned how to work the POS software. It is essential that you set realistic goals for your sales associates to learn quickly and get on with their day.

There are so many reasons why it’s important to have intuitive, user-friendly POS software. While your employees should be well-versed in the registers they’re using, you should also expect them to follow the proper training protocol with technology and customer service. If your employees aren’t performing up to par yet, it might be worth considering a change in goal-setting strategies.

• Forty hours is enough of an amount of time that someone should learn how to use the software.
• Once your cashier is up and running, you can set goals on how many items they should ring per minute to ensure that the quality of service doesn’t drop.

You can have the best training in the world, but if you hire poor cashiers, they will never provide a good customer experience. This is why it’s essential to train your employees and ensure they are on point.