The COVID-19 global pandemic is one of the most disruptive medical emergencies we’ve experienced in over a century.  Every business and consumer is affected by this crisis.  Social Distancing is one of the most important guidelines from the CDC for bending the curve of the COVID-19 virus downward.  Many retailers perform essential and critical functions such as grocery stores and pharmacies and other businesses like restaurants are just trying to stay in business by converting as much of their business as possible to take out or delivery orders.

For critical retailers such as pharmacies and grocery stores that must remain open, the priority is protecting their employees and customers.  In many retail scenarios adequate social distancing is not an option, so reducing the touchpoints between employees and customers is very important.  One of these interactions, handing a receipt from employee to customer, can be eliminated completely with Interactive Digital Receipts.

Many Receipts contain BPA chemicals and are not recyclable, and costs of receipt paper can run into the millions of dollars for large retailers.  Sustainability is not a top concern given today’s medical crisis, but reducing costs during times when retailers are seeing downward pressure on revenue can make a big difference in weathering the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Beyond reducing costs and physical interactions for grocery and pharmacies, Interactive E-Receipts can also be used as an engagement vehicle with customers to continue the dialogue after they leave the store and help maintain/grow revenue.  Consumers typically spend 2-2.5 minutes interacting with an E-Receipt, and they can be used to double the feedback from customers, grow loyalty programs, promote social postings for influences and include AI-based Recommendations and Offers based on what similar people purchased to bring them back to the store, or re-order online.

For restaurants trying to move as much business to takeout or deliver and maintain social distancing, sending a receipt electronically instead of handing one from the employee or delivery person to a customer can eliminate thousands of physical interactions.  In the US, consumers are willing to accept E-Receipts a majority of the time, so they don’t have to carry around paper and have easy access to their receipts in case they have a return, we expect the acceptance rate is close to 100% given the social distancing guidelines in effect across the country.

Interactive E-Receipts and marketing Next Best Offer to entice repeat customers may seem minor in today’s medical emergency, but as a benchmark, if a retailer has 1,000 customer transactions per day, moving those interactions to digital can save a restaurant over $18,000 per year in paper costs and with over 660K restaurants in the US that’s over 1Billion physical interactions we can eliminate and do our part to bend the curve of infection downward.