Guest expectations are forever changing, that much is obvious. A ‘wow’ moment today is a ‘meh’ moment tomorrow yet venues like yours are under immense pressure to think three steps for the next ‘how cool is that?!’ feature to keep up with evolving guest expectations.
In terms of payment methods alone, guests who once craved Self-Service Kiosks to check-in faster now want hands-free options for health and safety reasons. It’s a tough business, we hear you!
So join our team as we focus on how your guests interact with the payment side of your venue and how you can keep up with customer demands.
Omnichannel vs Unified
These two terms are thrown around all too often when referring to payment management platforms for all kinds of revenue reports, transactions, refunds, chargebacks…the list goes on. So let’s break it down into bite-sized pieces.
Omnichannel refers to when all your sales channels communicate with one another, kind of like stepping stones. One action informs another, which then informs another.
Unified refers to when all your sales channels are seamlessly connected in real-time allowing a constant flow of data between various systems. This is much more streamlined and efficient. 
Take our ROLLER® Payments solution, for example.
ROLLER® Payments is a unified payment solution meaning all moving parts are connected together to seamlessly share data. This means no matter how your customers interact with your venue, all transactions lead back to one centralized location. Pretty handy, right?
Unified platforms offer a wealth of benefits, including:
- Capturing actionable insights for cross-channel use, such as improving marketing processes
- Allowing venues to work smarter to deliver flexible buying experiences
- Generating lasting loyalty by observing buying behavior
Whether you choose an omnichannel or a unified solution really depends on how well you want to know your customers to develop a comprehensive Guest Experience.
The power of tokenization
Used by big-league apps, such as Apple Pay and Uber, Tokenization is a secure and clever way of capturing customer details and replacing them with an identifiable token to improve the Guest Experience. This allows venues to easily recognize returning customers across all channels without storing sensitive card data. Talk about brains and brawn all in one!
ROLLER® Payments uses tokenization to offer a smoother, Guest Experience.
This is achieved by allowing guests to:
- Store their payment details for a faster checkout experience later
- Save payment details for a subscription or a non-fixed schedule contract
- Submit later payments for subscriptions or for automatic top-ups to shopper accounts
The value of tokenization also lies in its ability to easily identify loyal guests and predict their buying habits based on their unique tokens. Predicting how and when your guests want to visit your venue can influence other aspects of growing foot traffic and driving revenue, for example, identifying the best time to send out marketing communications.
So remember to refer back to your existing customer data, where possible, they may just contain valuable insights!
Cross-Channel Fulfillment
Whether your guests order using an app and need an invoice delivered or finalize their purchase online then need a refund later through the app, cross-channel fulfillment connects all these actions to provide a better Guest Experience by - you guessed it - using a unified solution.
Venues can better identify guests through cross-channel reconciliation giving your guests that warm fuzzy feeling of being remembered as all your systems working in unison to improve your Guest Experience.
To sum up...
The future of payments is all about providing solutions that enhance the Guest Experience in three ways:
- Simplify processes
- Integrating channels into one, comprehensive system
- Understanding guests better to predict their behaviors
By using a unified commerce solution, venues like yours can expect to see improvements across various parts of their venue - from smoother payment reconciliation to effective marketing communication - to take their venue to the next level.
