[Improvement] Register Buyer-Facing Customer Data Collection

[#1]

Hi sellers! 👋

We’ve recently updated how you can collect customer data on Square Register, making the process simpler and faster. Now you can effortlessly gather relevant and actionable data, such as email addresses and phone numbers, from your buyers at checkout.

Previously, the process for collecting buyer data on the Register was less streamlined, asking for too much information while offering minimal customization on the buyer-screen. Now, you can collect emails and phone numbers directly from the buyer on the buyer-facing screen. If a customer already has an email or phone number in the system, it will be pre-populated and the buyer just needs to confirm it. 

When a customer inputs their email address, they will be automatically opted into email marketing. When a customer inputs their phone number, they will not be opted into text message marketing.

Learn more about how to customize information collected from customers. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out. We value your continued partnership and are always here to help.

[Sam_400º]

@srutz_SQ X2 is proving confusing to some. Most outside of the Square Team will know this more as the Register 👍

[XQUIZIT]

How can this be changed to the old way. If i'm creating an appointment on the square register I have input the customers name vs the old way where the customer inputs all their info. Without me hitting the "ask for phone number" or "ask for email" after this update. We should have the option to have the customers input all their info, it doesn't allow this anymore.

[XQUIZIT]

Add a New Customer to a Sale

You can add a new customer and their contact information to your Customer Directory before or after a sale on your Square Register.

Add a new customer to a sale before the transaction is complete:

1. From the Checkout screen, tap Add customer under No sale or Current sale.
2. Tap Create New Customer and enter their first and last name.
3. Tap Ask for email address and have your customer enter their email address on the customer display. You can also enter their information manually yourself.
4. Your customer can view the email marketing disclosure then tap Done.
5. Tap Ask for phone number and have your customer enter their phone number on the customer display screen. You can also enter this information manually yourself.
6. Tap Save to add the customer to the sale.

Note: You will need to manually fill out any additional customer fields beyond email address and phone number on your screen.

This doesn't make any sense when creating an appointment on the square register. It completely slowed down the collection of information yester after the update 

[nika]

Thanks for calling this out @Sam_400º ! Changed it. ✅

[etruax]

Hey @XQUIZIT I'm sorry to hear that and we're discussing your feedback. Appreciate you reaching out and letting us know; would you mind helping me understand what information you'd like to collect directly from the customer? 

[TwinkleToes]

Hi @srutz_SQ, @etruax,

I am relatively new to Square, having recently converted from the discontinued QuickBooks Point-of-Sale application in July. My husband has been designing and developing IT solutions for 40+ years and wants to provide his observations. He's hopeful that someone will start socializing his concerns with Square management to implement changes to philosophies and current business practices and start thinking "outside the box". He'll be at the keyboard for the remainder of this post.

I apologize up front for the novel, but I do hope that it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

This is typical of how changes continue to be implemented since our store was on-boarded. There can be many valid reasons why existing functionality is a better fit than changes forced upon your customers. Businesses will implement best practices based on the capabilities and functionality of the software applications . Each customer has unique situations. Yet Square continues to make decisions on what's best for their customers, rather than providing options for flexibility. The focus on gathering enhancement requirements should always have, as a top priority, allowing a minimal affect on your current customers' experience while providing  improved functionality. This is important for larger retail companies (Walmart, Home Depot, etc.) with their own internal IT departments because it's better to build flexibility up front than force "hard coded" solutions requiring additional costs and delays when changes are needed. This focus should be absolutely critical for a company like Square that goal is to provide a software solution to support as many customers as possible. Is this more difficult? Absolutely!!! But the general opinion from all of the posts indicates that Square would prefer to make decisions on what's best for all their customers rather than adopting a change in philosophy to provide improved capabilities that does not force all customers into a single solution.

The many complaints submitted about the old customer facing display was that there was no control over what information was displayed. The new functionality now limits what the customer can input themselves to just the email address and phone number. A better solution would have been to provide switches on the fields in the customer directory that indicates whether it can be visible on the customer display and whether the customer can maintain/input the value themselves. Instead, Square has forced all customers to adapt to the changes recently implemented. To restate, I understand that providing this type of flexibility is more difficult to implement; it's what I do for a living. But, wouldn't it be better to allow your customers to control the functionality rather than continuing to receive negative feedback when changes are implemented? Wouldn't it be better to do it right the first time rather than circling back to do it again?

I am NOT looking for a new job or additional work, but would absolutely take time to discuss further if anyone from Square is interested in opening up a dialogue.

Regards,

Mike

[etruax]

Hey @TwinkleToes appreciate your feedback and the novel was fantastic -- would love to chat with Mike further about this. Please send him my email [email protected] or feel free to send me his and we'll find a time to chat. thank you!

[etruax]

Hi @XQUIZIT  Thank you so much for reaching out and providing feedback. We very much appreciate it and want you to know that we’re listening. We realize we missed the mark here and have rolled back the recent changes in order to re-evaluate, better understand more seller use cases, and figure out a more sustainable solution going forward. As a result, we will be deleting this post, but will keep you updated in Product Updates when there's new functionality. Please feel free to email me at [email protected] with any additional questions. Thank you so much! 

[XQUIZIT]

Thanks for the reply etruax, before the update the customer was able to input all their info on the customer facing screen like their name, phone number, email, address, etc.  it was much better than having to ask for their name and us having to input it for them (especially having to ask for spelling with odd names) then hit the “ask” so the screen can allow the customer to enter their phone number then have to hit “ask” again for the customer to input their email. It would be best to have an “ask” key and allow the customer to add all their info.

[SiBellebeauty]

This is super helpful ! What a great change c

[etruax]

Thank you for the feedback too --> can I ask why you're collecting address from your customers?

[XQUIZIT]

We normally don't collect address information, but it did come up on the customers facing screen. It also asked where do you work (we have no way to edit this out). If we were able to customize this screen it would be awesome because we're an automotive accessory business and would like collect other info also like Year, Make, and Model information. I think if we're able to customize the info collected most business will benefit as they will be able to collect info relivent to their particular business. Thank you so much for roll back as this helped tremendously. keep up the good work really appreciate it.

[etruax]

this is REALLY helpful feedback as we iterate on this feature, thank you so much for your time!!

[jettys]

When this was first posted, I was able to utilize it on my Square Register and very much liked it compared to what it was before! After a few weeks, it reverted to the old way and has not returned to this improvement since — we very much prefer the improvement as it doesn't ask for unnecessary information from customers that we don't require (i.e place of work/birth date). Is this something that will be fixed? 

[srutz_SQ]

Hi @jettys, thank you so much for the feedback, we appreciate it. We received a good amount of responses on this right after we launched and found that many sellers actually wanted more control and flexibility over what was being displayed, rather than just the simplification and reduction of fields. We ended up rolling back this change in order to re-evaluate, better understand more seller use cases, and figure out a more sustainable solution going forward. It is on our roadmap to re-evaluate, so we will keep you posted here, and if you're willing, would love to reach back out when the team ramps back on this project to get additional feedback. Please let me know if you'd be interested in sharing more. Thank you again for reaching out and providing this feedback! 

[jettys]

Oh, having more control over what's being displayed would be amazing! I am thrilled to hear that this is being re-evaluated with more improvements. Can't wait!