Macy's Black Friday Crash & Burn
The Black Friday fail started at around noon on Friday, when social media was buzzing with reports of extra-long lines in-store at the famous retail chain. Twitter was showcasing numerous photos of frustrated consumers, and merchandise just left on the counters after customers grew tired of waiting for hours to be checked out.
According to Macy’s, the “capacity-related issue” was fixed later that afternoon, but the true question is: “How many sales were lost during this high-traffic time due to the technology glitch?” We may never know, but there are additional ways that could have at least potentially saved the lost revenue.
“Point-of-sale systems should always have a back-up solution in case something major like what happened to Macy’s occurs,” SuiteRetail’s co-founder Jeff Schneider says. “The entire business should be able to smoothly and flawlessly run offline in an emergency situation where credit card processing can still be done at the same speed, and customers should not even be aware there is an issue.”
Back-up system or not, the company let down lots of shoppers. Let it be a warning to other retailers that no matter how good the deal is, customers want and expect your credit card processors to run flawlessly. If they don’t, prepare to have consumers saying #neveragain, as many publicly have said with Macy’s.
If you are a mid-size retailer looking to avoid having the next #prnightmare due to failures in your point of sale system, contact the SuiteRetail Sales Team.
