Specsavers has won a process innovation award for streamlining its in-store payment systems, a process that has significantly sped up customer service.
In November 2022, Specsavers implemented QuickPay for Windows, a streamlined way for team members to process customer transactions from any dispense desk in the store.
Removing the single transaction point within each store and turning every dispense desk into a customer transaction point added between five and 20 new payment sites in stores.
Gareth Dixon, director of central operations at Specsavers ANZ said “This instantly removed bottlenecks, improving ease and convenience for our store team members and customers alike.”
Dixon told Franchise Executives “We get more than four million Australians through our doors every year; that’s a large volume of customers. The integration allowed every dispense point to become a till and we can serve almost four times as many people as before.”
Specsaver innovation award
The streamlined system has improved the payment processing for health fund customers which had been quite a manual process, he said.
“Now we can transfer all the data across, remove the risks of manual error and speed up the process.”
The new system took about three months to rollout.
“We’ve got a really good tech team. It was fairly complex to install, but they delivered. The process relies on integrated payment systems, and dealing with customer cards, so it has to be right. “
Specsavers undertook significant testing with the finance team, health funds and the digital claims platform.
The company was recognised as an ABA100 Winner for Process Innovation in The Australian Business Awards 2023.
Fresh off the back of the innovation award, Specsavers is planning a workforce management system upgrade in 2024.
More innovations at Specsavers
“Right now it is hard for customers with the cost of living, and franchise partners have cost pressures. For us it’s how can we balance value with keeping costs low for our franchisees. The workforce management update will be important, it will give franchise partners the data to manage their businesses,” said Dixon.
“We are always looking at what’s next. How can we save time? We have upgraded our voice to customer platform this year and gained great insights from customers.
“At the moment there are a lot of upgrades to legacy technology which is not exciting but it gives us a robustness, and helps us change more quickly in the future,” he said.
