'The red I had at Christmas, you know the one'
A regular comes in on a Saturday and asks for the red he bought for Christmas dinner. He thinks it was Spanish, possibly Portuguese, and it had a label with a bird on it. The member of staff on duty is new. The EPOS might have the sale, if he paid by card and if he was recognised. But he actually ordered it on the website, as part of a mixed case, which the shop system cannot see.
Your owner would have remembered. Your owner is at a trade tasting.
A customer's history is split four ways
Most wine merchants sell through several channels, and each keeps its own record of what the customer bought. The EPOS has shop sales, but often without a named customer. The web shop has online orders. The club platform has case contents. Tasting orders sit in a separate spreadsheet. The customer is one person; the records are four strangers.
- Shop sales are often not linked to a named customer at all.
- The same person has different email addresses in different systems.
- Club case contents are not visible from the shop.
- Likes and dislikes are in staff heads, not in records.
- Gift purchases confuse what the customer drinks themselves.
What forgetting costs
Independent merchants win on knowing their customers. Every time a regular has to describe a label because nobody can look it up, that advantage slips. Recommendations are less useful without history. And the owner becomes the only person who can serve the best customers well, which does not scale and does not survive a day off.
One history, joined up
- Customer records from the EPOS, the web shop, the club platform and tasting orders are matched into one person, using email, phone and name, with uncertain matches sent to a person to confirm.
- Every purchase is shown in one timeline: wine, vintage, date, channel and whether it was marked as a gift.
- Staff search by name, phone or postcode on the shop computer or a tablet, and filter the history by colour, country or grape.
- Notes on likes and dislikes are added by staff and shared with the club case planner, so everyone uses the same knowledge.
- At the till, identifying the customer is quick, by phone number or a loyalty card, so future shop sales are recorded against them.
- Customers can see their own history online if you want to offer that.
| Question at the counter | Where the answer comes from now |
|---|---|
| 'The red at Christmas' | Timeline filtered to December, red |
| 'Something like the one I liked' | History plus staff notes |
| 'Have I had this before?' | Search of every channel |
| 'What did I send my brother?' | Gift-marked purchases |
What you record about customers, and how long you keep it, should follow your privacy policy. We build the history to respect the rules you set.
Any member of staff can serve a regular
The Saturday regular gives his phone number. The new member of staff filters his history to December, finds the Douro red with the bird on the label, sees there are six in stock and notes that he also liked a similar wine from Dao in the summer. He leaves with both.
Over time, the joined history also shows which customers buy across channels, who has drifted away and what your regulars actually drink, which is useful for buying and for the newsletter.
Is this your shop counter?
- Customers ask for wines they bought before and staff cannot find them.
- Shop, web, club and tasting sales sit in separate systems.
- Only the owner remembers what regulars like.
- Most shop sales are not linked to a named customer.
- Recommendations do not use purchase history.