A Happy Ending to a Friday Afternoon POS Nightmare

Skurla's is a Point-of-Sale solutions provider for restaurants and retail stores in Alaska. Founded by John and Phyllis Skurla in 1976 as Skurla's Cash Register Co., the company has evolved with the times and now helps local companies to manage their businesses, control their costs and increase their bottom lines.

Of course, as the POS technology deployed by Skurla's became more sophisticated, so too did the need to be able to anticipate and handle the new issues associated with the new hardware and new software. That's when the Skurlas decided to adopt the Vigilix platform.

And they are so glad they did. Time and again, Skurla's has used the Vigilix platform to save the day for its clients.

The Friday afternoon incident

It was a Friday afternoon, five minutes before closing time at one of Skurla's customer sites, when it happened: one of the employees accidentally deleted their touchscreen menus. Without the touch screens, the manager wouldn't be able to ring up the day's sales and complete the business transactions, which meant no money to replenish the customer's bank account.

Without the Vigilix POS remote support solution, it would have taken Skurla's at least eight to 12 hours to dispatch a tech to the remote Alaskan customer site. But the customer was on the phone in a panic, pleading for immediate assistance.

Fortunately, months prior, Skurla's had insisted that the customer purchase their off-site back-up service just in case of such an emergency. Skurla's explained that for a small monthly fee they would be using the Vigilix CYA remote back-up solution to ensure the customer would never lose their critical POS data. If the customer was skeptical of the value of this service then, they're certainly believers now.

Five minutes to resolution

"That customer was in dire straits," recalled Lynn Skurla, the company's general manager, "but there was no possible way we could quickly get there in person to diagnose and fix the problem. But because we had the Vigilix Connect PCI-compliant remote access agent running at the client site, one of our techs was able to immediately gain access and control over their system. He was then able to retrieve and restore the missing menu files from the Vigilix off-site back-up system, and the client was literally back in business within 5 minutes of that panic call."

That client was already a loyal customer of Skurla's. But now they're a raving fan, telling anyone who listens how Skurla's came to their rescue that Friday afternoon.