Apple Patent's Ordering with iPhone · 28 December 07 by mastorna
News of an Apple patent for wireless ordering has spread rather quickly. The gist of this patent is that Apple will allow iPhones and the iPod Touch to connect to a brick-and-mortar retail location for pre-advanced ordering of an item. The idea isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination and frankly Apple tends to patent just about every idea that they can possibly drum-up.
The rub in the initial reports was that they hypothetically positioned the experience at a major coffee retailer whom they’ve already got a digital experience with. [who could that be? -ed] Now, those initial reports were all well and fine when you consider that its just a few name drops as to the overall possibilities of a technology architecture such as this, but what was lacking was the basic facts: its just an simple idea. The above report carried the possibility a little bit too far. Laying next to this rather forwarding thinking idea is the hardened fact that a Point of Service system (the cash register) is an extremely locked down network making implementing such an idea for suggested retailers a networking nightmare. How Apple solves for this is the true genius but still, admittedly, a little bit unknown.
The trick, if Apple were to do something more with this idea, is to allow for network agnostic ordering to take place that allows a POS to allow orders to fall directly into the queue in a seamless manner. I wouldn’t tie this “web ordering” to a POS or any pre-existing digital infrastructure in a store but perhaps use bluetooth, bonjour, or something akin to
a) notify you if you’re within a networked range
b) allow for the user to select a pre-defined set of functionality based on this service location
c) user interaction would broadcast to a management system in store \ over the web?
d) somehow get the front of house or POS system to recognize that there is a new order in the cue.
Starbucks and Apple did something quite original in the Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks in that you’ve got digital goods available instantly at a physical location. Within the purely digital realm, handling and managing of data is a breeze. Bringing the digital to the physical, however, is much more complicated.
In the end, I think we’ve got a blueprint for the future: a store that has digital features but is still a face-to-face customer interaction location. Despite my overall depression when speaking with most people, despite a service agent constantly smiling and trying to make the experience a delightful one, you cannot remove this relationship from any physical store. People demand face-to-face customer interaction. They always will.
tagged in: business
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