By Aimee Chanthadavong
Australian-based company mHITs has launched its SMS payment service at Subway Rouse Hill in Sydney, NSW.
Q-Jumper is a point of sale solution designed specifically for the hospitality industry, enabling customers to order and pay ahead via SMS to avoid queues. To order using Q-Jumper, customers use a SMS code for each menu item. The cost of the item is automatically calculated and deducted from their mHITs account balance.
Speaking to Retailbiz, Harold Dimpel, mHITS CEO, said the company has been trialling the system for the last 12 months.
“We’ve been trialling it at various cafes because we know that coffee is the second most consumed commodity – so that’s a no brainer. We also know Q-Jumper will work because we’ve done the studies and have found that queuing is a problem at high traffic cafes and restaurants,” he said.
“Queuing is not only annoying for customers but it also constitutes as a revenue loss for retailers. So we what we can do with Q-Jumper is capture the customers and have them lock in their order so when they arrive at the café they just have to pick up their order.”
According to Dimpel, the system works best for specific markets which offer the same products and have regular customers.
“The strategy is to identify specific markets our product will fit with. When there’s a high transaction frequency with about 10 to 20 in a range which are purchased by regular customers from the same venue then this is where Q-Jumper will succeed,” he said.
“It’s a huge cost to have staff providing the same service when it can just become almost an automated process. And there’s a real push in the market already like for example, Woolworths having the self-service check-out systems. We believe Q-Jumper will just make this process simpler.”