Retail Customer Experience: Eight Ways the Smartphone Can Help Your Customers Love You

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Retail Customer Experience, a daily news portal devoted to helping retailers differentiate the shopping experience.

At GlobalShop held in Las Vegas, Molly Garris, director of digital strategy at Arc Worldwide, outlined eight examples of how retailers can use mobile technologies to increase sales.

  1. Help shoppers prepare: Shoppers are creating and storing lists on their phones, but some retailers are giving customers even more options. Kroger’s app not only allows a customer to create lists, but it also locates deals and coupons and then allows her to load them on her Kroger loyalty card. Target’s app tells shoppers if the product they want is in stock and where to find it.
  2. Invite them into the store: Shopkick not only shows customers all the stores around them, but gives them incentives for entering. For example, when a user opens the American Eagle app (a ShopKick partner) and walks into American Eagle, she earns points which lead to deals and coupons. Customers at American Eagle also gain extra points for trying on clothes.
  3. Show them around: One superstore’s "Find It" app allows shoppers to type in what they are looking for and will then direct them to the location. Aisle411 is another app that helps customers find products, but a retailer must partner with the company to get its maps into the system. Shoppers can also use the app to scan barcodes to read product reviews and find out about in-store discounts and promotions.
  4. Help them decide: Customers often seek advice about purchases, so the smartphone can be a tool to help them compare products in the store instead of simply looking them up on competing sites. For example, Best Buy, which provides QR codes on all its product tags, has an app that allows shoppers to hold their phones over the codes to get more info. The app can compare up to four products side by side, so customers can see the differences.
  5. Encourage them to share: Converse has an app that lets shoppers take a photo of shoes, see it in a variety of colors and styles and then instantly text it or send it to Facebook. Macy’s created an augmented reality experience through an app that allowed shoppers to point their phones at a specific place on the floor triggering characters to pop up.
  6. Make the transaction easier: Employees equipped with iPod Touches in C Wonder, a new store in New York, can handle transactions from anywhere in the store. Customers no longer have to wait in line and can purchase a product whenever they’re ready.
  7. Make sure they’re satisfied: Home Depot’s app gives customers tips on do-it-yourself projects, including "how to" videos. Kroger has an app that gives its customers grilling tips and recipes when they buy a specific brand of charcoal.
  8. Invite them back: Walgreens sends text alerts to customers when it’s time for them to refill their prescriptions.
kroger app

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Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions: What are some of the obvious and less obvious ways retailers should be looking to capitalize on mobile devices? Which of the suggestions mentioned in the article should receive highest priority? Which should be avoided, in your opinion?

Poll

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Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
12 years ago

Retailers should use mobile devices to make the customer shopping experience easier and rewarding. Easier means faster — allowing customers to find what they need and complete the transaction quickly, automatically applying applicable discounts. Rewarding means added value — delight customers with instant savings, easy accumulation of loyalty credits and incentives to visit again.

The apps that facilitate this, and are intuitively easy to use, will be gain adaption. The retailers that offer them will gain sales.

Richard J. George, Ph.D.
Richard J. George, Ph.D.
12 years ago

The key to mobile devices is ease of engagement with the shopper. Time starved shoppers need to be presented with solutions, knowledge based and solutions based. The apps which focus on preparation, ease of transactions, and satisfaction make the most sense in that they approximate the shopping experience, namely before, during and after the sale.

Martin Mehalchin
Martin Mehalchin
12 years ago

I’m very bullish on mobile in retail and agree with all 8 examples cited in the article. One often overlooked aspect is the potential for mobile to revolutionize internal operations and drive significant cost savings. Linking inventory to a mobile POS device can dramatically decrease distribution and labor costs as well as allow for employees to be more knowledgeable and helpful to customers. Home Depot claims that the labor savings from its mobile POS rollout covered the $64 million cost of the project within one year.

Ronnie Perchik
Ronnie Perchik
12 years ago

I’ve read about pretty much every smartphone app and mobile application mentioned above in the past year or so. That is to say, it’s definitely a hot topic, and consumers are, for the most part, responding positively.

The biggest advantage of retailers utilizing mobile is localization. If you can create a more valuable experience for your customers by tailoring it to their habits, you’re golden. And that enhanced experience should be central to your objectives for a mobile campaign.

Of the applications above, numbers 1 through 3 relate specifically to what I mentioned above. I would say that one thing consumers don’t want is to have their iPhone buzzing every 8 seconds with a new promotional message. With mobile, as with social media, you’re dealing with a sensitive space. And if you overstep that boundary of privacy, the consumer is turned off altogether.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
12 years ago

These are great tools for the shopper. I’d like to see more available from apparel retailers and manufacturers. I can imagine an app that lets me know when new fashions similar to my previous purchases are available, gives offers for them, and where they are in stock. Take some of the tried-and-true “black book” techniques of some great stores and automate them to be proactive for the best customers.

Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg
12 years ago

When talking about mobile as a shopping tool, I like to consider the different contexts in which mobile get’s used.

At Home – Here mobile devices get used as replacements for traditional desktop computers. So you see use-cases like conducting e-commerce for goods shoppers don’t want to buy in a store. You also see all the early product research activities for future planned purchases. “What’s the Best Laptop?” “Who sells that Dress Mrs. Obama is Wearing?” This is the context where we see the most tablet usage. An interesting new behavior is the large amount of this usage that happens in front of the TV. A key aspect of this context is that if I go to your URL on a mobile device, I had better get a mobile optimized experience (and all too often I don’t). Tips #1, #5, #7, and #8 are targeted at this context.

On the Go – This is an entirely new context. “Where is the nearest store that carries my favorite mouth wash?” “Who has ink for my printer in stock?” “What’s the best deal on diet coke within 5 miles of me?” The core use-cases here are local SEO (make sure my store shows up in location searches), and inventory checks (tell search engines and comparison shopping engines what I have in stock in local stores right now), and frankly retailers have a LOT of work to do on these two fundamentals. Tip #2 (Shopkick/location marketing) is the tip targeted at this context.

In the Store – This is the context that retailers most fear. “Shoppers will use mobile to figure out that I don’t have the best price or right assortment.” But this context is also a huge opportunity for retailers. Think of all the sales that are lost due to fear of buyers remorse. “If I buy this today, will I get home and realize it doesn’t work with my TV?” “Will I get home and realize I paid too much?” “Will I get home and find out my girl-friend already had a bad experience with this brand?” All those fears are sales killers, and in-store mobile has the potential to rid shoppers of those fears. It also offers a way to get relevant social proof in the store, detailed product information, suggestive selling, personalized recommendations, wayfinding, and much more. We’ve just scratched the surface of how shoppers will use mobile in the store. Tip #3, #4, and #6 are focused on this context.