Your FEC’s Blueprint for Success

Oct 30, 2024 | Education, Operations, Partners

This educational post was provided by Embed.

It’s time to break your own record-highs and future-proof your business through transformational growth with this FEC blueprint for success. Here are the 5 must-haves from your tech partners that are crucial to your success:

Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions

SaaS solutions drive transformational growth, given how cashless has become the norm. 90% of consumers now prefer to pay with credit or with debit card over cash according to a study. According to Forbes, 83% of consumers prefer cashless payments, and when they do, they tend to spend more. 

    Examples:

    1. Mobile Wallet – With the only Apple and Google certified FEC solution in the industry – you can achieve a whopping 5x increase in average reload value ($50.57) versus cash ($9.90) and credit card ($31.95), with 60% of reloads happening even before guests arrive at your venue – perfect feature for parents who want to monitor how much their children are spending, eradicating the possibility of theft, and giving the consumer full control of the gaming experience.
    1. STATS business intelligence dashboard – Research shows that staff who are assigned data analytics work spend 90% of the work week on nitty-gritty data-related tasks – and this does not include the analysis required to gain actual insights that drive business decisions. STATS, powered by Amazon Web Services, gets the data work done. This helps you have real-time visibility to FEC data like game performance, revenue prediction based on retro data, inventory, and even manpower allocation. Reports can now be generated and automated in just a few clicks, compared to manual data labour – making it prone to human error and miscalculation, and freeing you and your staff up of time-consuming data churn.

    Payment Gateway Integration

    Guests now expect faster, easier, and safer ways to transact with businesses, and this paved the way for the huge uptick in the adoption of cashless payments. Accepting cash payments is 3x more expensive to handle and process versus card payments according to an IHL Group study. That means lower costs for you.

    Make sure you are not losing your hard-earned revenue to these hidden merchant fees that are incurred from accepting card payments: 

    • Monthly fees
    • Monthly maintenance fees
    • Review trackers fees
    • Statement fees
    • Compliance fees

    A lot of payment processors lure operators with promises of better prices, eventually trapping them with deceptive contracts and inflated cancellation fees. This is why good payment gateway rates are an important pillar in an FEC’s blueprint for success.

    Integrated card payments bring in time savings and error reduction through automatic reconciliation versus daily end-of-day manual reconciliation across various channels. “A payment gateway integration can be linked to your software to automatically connect to your credit card device to accept payment, recording it back to your system,” explains Jeremy Dickamore, Payment Gateway Guru at Embed. “This automates end-of-day reconciliation, saving you time, money, and headaches.  Because of the direct connection with an integration, costly errors, like accidentally entering the wrong amount or overcharging a customer, can be drastically reduced.”

    Adding convenience fees on top of your costs affect the guest as well. A 2020 American Express survey found that 83% of customers stop patronising businesses that charge convenience fees or surcharges. 76% think it’s unfair to pay extra for their choice of mode of payment. Consumers resent such establishments for passing the added costs to them, on top of what they also must pay to use credit cards. 

    A 2024 Embed report shows an average savings of 38% for operators who decided to go with payment gateway integration. One of these customers got more than $56,000 in annual savings! If that doesn’t seem much, that’s over $550,000 worth of savings in 10 years – a new facility could be just around the corner. Here’s a FREE tool you can use to see how much you’re losing to fees and your potential savings from simply changing your payment gateway provider.

    Highly Trained Staff

    Your guests’ satisfaction is only as good as the training you and your staff receive on a regular basis. A Gallup found that businesses that put a premium in employee development like training see 11% greater profitability. 

      Your manpower will have more time on their hands to actually focus on guests thanks to SaaS solutions’ ease of use and drive towards transformational revenue growth, and training them regularly to do the following would make them cross-functional ambassadors:

      • Conduct proper inventory and product management
      • Increase revenue through promotion and product creation
      • Ability to track theft, both internal and external
      • Manage your location self-sufficiently
      • Require less supervision
      • Increase engagement from customers
      • Have a significant increase in productivity
      • Get more customers happy
      • Stay competitive in the industry

      Customer success training programs like this not only ensure that your system is maximised, but that your staff is empowered. You can design an incentive program to go with the certification to keep your staff motivated and rewarded for boosting profitability and improving the guest experience at your venue.

      Embed’s Mobile Wallet has seen a massive 5x increase in average reload value from its 2022-2023 metric results from FECs who are currently using it. To unlock its full potential, Embed’s training arm developed a certification program wherein FEC staff can become Mobile Wallet Ambassadors through training conducted by experts in the solution. Participating FECs immediately saw lucrative results – an uptick in Mobile Wallet sign-ups from their guests which increased their average reload value. 

      Ongoing Training

      Well-trained staff provide superior customer service that increases satisfaction and loyalty among FEC guests. 42% of consumers would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience. 

        Ongoing training is the key to achieve this. If your business has a comprehensive training program, you’ll likely experience a 218% higher income per employee compared to those with ineffective training, a study found.

        Using the Mobile Wallet as an example, here are some effective training program approaches that will equip your staff and maximise the solution’s potential so your guests can get the best value and you score greater revenue:

        • Hands-on Training –Hands-on training at the venue is most effective for teaching your manpower the basics for game operation and management, POS systems, and attractions. In case of the Mobile Wallet, your staff will be more confident in converting guests to go cashless if they have hands-on experience on the step-by-step process of Mobile Wallet usage – from registration to reloading game cards. 
        • Role-play – This type of training exercise can help staff practice guest interactions and possible conflict resolution scenarios. For the Mobile Wallet, your staff can be presented with different role-play scenarios and how they can creatively and effectively insert the Mobile Wallet in that conversation. 
        • On-the-job Training – Aside from helping new hires acclimate to their roles, on-the-job training enables them to learn from experienced staff. Likewise, a seasoned Mobile Wallet expert or mentor can provide new strategies alongside best practices in launching and implementing the solution to guests, both to new and long-time staff.
        • Certifications and Courses – Offering certifications and specialised courses for your staff can motivate them to advance their skills and pursue career development opportunities. GoTrain™, Embed’s training arm that’s part of its Success Squad™, has a Mobile Wallet Certification Program designed to equip your staff with tips and tricks, industry best practices, and more to successfully launch and drive adoption of Mobile Wallet at your location. 
        • Feedback and Performance Evaluation – Regular assessment through feedback and performance evaluation are important sustaining efforts to identify your staff’s progress and areas for improvement. For Embed GoTrain™, monthly performance reviews are delivered to FEC location management to provide a comprehensive snapshot of staff performance on driving Mobile Wallet uptake. 

        Ready to engage your staff in valuable ongoing training? Don’t forget to check out Embed’s GoTrain™ and GoTrain™ Express programs for inspiration.

        Customer-centric Solutions Partner

        Dave & Buster’s in North America, the Veltmeijer Group in Europe, and Majid Al Futtaim Group in the Middle East – the most prominent FECs in the business have one thing in common. They have a solutions provider who is more than that – one with a customer-centric approach that establishes a partnership geared towards propelling the business towards success, as opposed to being a mere technical solution supplier or vendor that’s transactional in nature.

          The tech partner you choose is the final pillar in your FEC’s blueprint for success. You can’t make a successful B2C connection if your B2B partnership is still focused on price instead of value and insights. Here are things to look for in your solutions provider:

          • Customer success strategy plan – One Customer Success Agent/Specialist is not enough for an entire clientele with different business sizes, number of locations, needs, and goals. Instead of focusing on a straightforward lifecycle to onboard, engage, and renew the solutions that run your system, a good customer success strategy plan from a solutions provider should have specialty roles with focused areas, deep expertise, and narrowly defined responsibilities from the team you’re going to be working with.
          • Dedicated customer success team – There is no greater testament to a solutions provider’s customer-centricity than hiring a dedicated team of specialists, experts, and gurus to add greater value on top of products, solutions, and service. Embed formed the Success Squad™ – a team with a single-minded aim of helping their customers succeed through expertise in payment gateway, cloud solutions, business growth, customer success, and training and development to drive transformational growth.
          • Tools for success – Equipping you with tools for success ensures that your system is maximised to its fullest potential, giving you the best possible results to grow your business. The Embed Success Squad™ delivers high-value, no-cost perks for Embed customers, which include:
            • FREE Mobile Wallet for 1 year 
            • FREE STATS for 3 months
            • Cloud technology consultation from SaaS experts
            • Best practice sharing from the biggest FECs in the industry
            • Complimentary payment gateway cost-savings analysis from the resident Payment Gateway Guru
            • FREE printed promotional creative kits to drive guest adoption of Mobile Wallet
            • Choice of tailored training via the Embed Help Centre, 1:1 training, GoTrain™ onsite training, or GoTrain™ Express virtual training
          • Best tech partners –The reliability of your solutions provider is measured by the reliability of their tech partners. Cashless solutions need a reliable hybrid system like Embed’s for maximum operational efficiency even in during network outages. 

          A hybrid system is a strategic combination of both cloud-based systems and onsite or on-premises-based systems. Cloud systems feature computing services delivered over the internet while on-premises systems process service by onsite servers and other hardware. On-premises servers ensure business maintenance and continuity even when the internet is unavailable, keeping gameplay and sales always up and running. This kind of architecture ensure that your business keeps going even when the network is down.

          Without a reliable data center partner, even multiple backup onsite servers can be overworked, causing downtime. This is why Embed is known to partner with global cloud provider Amazon Web Services for customers’ data centre platform for its cloud-based solutions. 

          SaaS solutions, payment gateway integration, highly trained staff, ongoing training, and a customer-centric solutions partner are non-negotiable for FEC success. To start your own journey towards success and future-proofing your business, don’t forget to download the FREE resource on the FEC Blueprint for Success.