Retail Customer Experience: Go Mobile Or Go Home - Check-Out Lines Are Disappearing
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.
Although only 13 percent of retailers are currently testing mobile POS, another 19 percent said they will begin tests in the next 12 months, according to a recent survey from CompTIA.
And that number will steadily climb over the next few years as retailers look for ways to provide customers with faster and better service, predicts John Kenney, SVP of business development for Stella Nova Technologies Inc.
"The entire experience of queuing-up and waiting in line is going to go from standard operating procedure to unacceptably bad customer experience overnight," Mr. Kenney said. "It's tricky because mobile implementations are going to be radically different from retailer to retailer and vertical to vertical. That being said, every retailer is going to have to figure out what mobile transacting looks like in their environment."
That's been pretty easy for Apple and Nordstrom, two early adapters of mobile POS, said Mr. Kenney, who pointed out that Apple employees' use of iPads for product info and checkout sets the bar high for mobility best practices.
Nordstrom has already armed 6,000 sales associates in 117 of its stores with modified iPod Touches. Each device has a merchandise scanner and a credit card slider to allow staff to check out customers from anywhere in the store.
"They've done a really good job on the operational side," Mr. Kenney said. "You get the sense when you talk with store employees there that there is no question about the company's direction to use mobile POS. They clearly have everyone pointed in the same direction, and I'm guessing that's why they are seeing so much success with it."
Throwing together a mobile strategy too quickly, however, is just as bad as tiptoeing around implementation, said Tim Herbert, CompTIA vice president, who pointed out that adoption of any emerging solution must be accompanied by a broad-based technology strategy that addresses foundational needs.
"Reliable wireless connectivity, robust security, quality end-points, data back-up and other IT basics cannot be overlooked by retailers anxious to add new capabilities," he said. For smaller retailers, managed IT services, whereby an outside IT specialist manages some or all of customer's IT systems, are an option, according to Mr. Herbert.
[RetailWire editor's note: JC Penney last week announced plans to eliminate traditional checkouts in favor of mobile payment devices by the end of 2013.]