Depending on the business you are running, in order to make your mark in today’s very competitive industry and widen your client base, you need to offer something extra to your customers. One such way is to be more flexible in transacting orders. Although face-to-face communication is still best, you should make allowances non-traditional transactions, such as orders placed over the internet or by phone.

In order to be able to successfully complete business transactions that are made through telephone, you should have the necessary tools of the trade. Naturally, you need to have a telephone line on which to receive orders from. However, apart from the mandatory telephone line, you need to have a Point of Sale system which can complete face-less sales transactions.

If you want to keep your equipment to a minimum, you should be sure that your Point of Sale System has the requisites: a terminal in which all data will be stored, a scanner which would retrieve the product data (price, product code, quantity) and a printer on which (of course) to print out receipts and similar documents. However, since you will be accepting payments and payment instructions made through the phone, your Point of Sale Software should have features that will enable more sensitive transactions to be completed. Your POS system should not require that a credit card be physically swiped through a magnetic strip reader, nor should it require a signature or a pin number for the purchase to be authorized. Your Point of Sale System should be able to process credit card payments even if you only plug in the name of the credit card holder, the card number, expiry dates and the verification numbers listed at the back of the card.

What you should ask Point of Sale system representatives is if the POS software needed for faceless transactions would be able to verify if the card is legitimate or not. There are programs that are integrated in the software wherein additional verification is conducted before the card transaction is processed and subsequently authorized. Your POS system should have this capacity and, in addition to this, the process of counterchecking the validity of the card should be done smoothly and in a very short span of time. If you program is capable of this, as well as other functions, then you should not encounter any difficulties in conducting business transactions in cyberspace or through the phone lines. Admittedly, it’s an unconventional way of doing business, but it’s a growing trend, and for you to survive, you (through your POS system) should be able to adequately and efficiently meet the demands of your market.