When you want to understand a culture, go to a coffee shop, says Steve Benitez because for him, coffee shop is the “microcosm of the culture.”
More than 20 years ago, Benitez set up a small kiosk. Back then, he said, the coffee lifestyle was totally new to Filipino consumers. He had to give out coffee for free.
From a small kiosk in Cebu, Benitez’s Bo’s Coffee now had more than 100 stores nationwide. Today, more and more Filipinos are accustomed to the coffee lifestyle where you sip a concocted coffee inside a shop.
Today, coffee shops compete for the attention of consumers. “Coffee lifestyle is about the experience in the store.”
And for Bo’s Coffee’s CEO, customer experience in the store is about three things: store design, customer engagement, and technology. Design sets the mood. Customer service should be on point. Technology eases customer experience in the store.
All of these things come into play when consumers make a purchase. Today, consumers want to pay based on their preferred method and that presents a challenge to Bo’s Coffee.
Finding all-in-one payment platform
“One of the challenges we had was technology platform wherein customer comes in and one credit card or bank doesn’t accept the credit card of the other bank. Where there’s now a trend on using other platforms, we couldn’t accept,” says Benitez.
Benitez was looking for a platform which could offer all payment options within one platform. He found Maya One, an all-in-one terminal that accepts all types of payments, including credit, debit, prepaid cards as well as Maya QR.
“Maya gave us the flexibility to accept all different forms of payments. We can now accept credit cards, not only from one bank but from all other banks. We also accept Maya wallets, and then WeChat, and so on and so forth,” he said.
Efficiencies with 'One Payment Platform' model
The impact was felt immediately.
Instead of operating too many platforms, Bo’s Coffee integrates all its payments channels into one platform. “We only talk to one company to do it with us and the company also has helped us made our brand awareness to a wider market. Maya has their own platform, they help us market our brand, that’s also something that helped us within our operations.”
For our customers, the reaction was instant. “They’re very happy that we accept all additional sorts of payments. I think we also attracted a new set of customers to our stores through Maya. The younger sets because they are the ones who are technology savvy,” says Benitez.
For Bo’s Coffee, the new coffee lifestyle is about the perfect marriage between a physical store and a digital platform. Today, the well-loved brand can now do food delivery via a third-party provider and advance ordering system through Messenger with Maya as the first online payment option.
“If we’re able to find a way to merge these two seamlessly and level up the customer experience that’s going to be the picture of the future. We will continuously work on that,” says Benitez.
