 Angela is 17 years old and she is on her high-school spare. She has an iPhone, sends an average of 2,300 text messages per month, has 1,585 friends on Facebook, 402 followers on Twitter, and loves to play foursquare. No, not the foursquare we used to play in school with a ball, but rather the application that today has 10 million subscribers posting their GPS locations 24/7 from their mobile phones. Angela is in that massive new market segment that includes Gen X, Gen Y, and the Millennials. And one thing is certain: Angela and her mobile compatriots experience more of the world through their cell phones. So how do you appeal to Angela? How do you bring Angela, and everyone else between the ages of 12 and 32 into your stores to spend all that discretionary income? This is the challenge of today, but also represents a most delicious and irresistible opportunity for sales growth and loyalty. QR Codes Android Market, Apple iTunes, and Blackberry App World have all created new portals for us to reach our customers. By publishing QR (quick response) codes on our menus, store doors and packaging, people like Angela will scan them, which uploads store applications to our customer’s mobile phones from these portals. These applications can do all kinds of things like incent them to dine more often, increase spend per visit, streamline ordering and payment processes, while inviting all their friends to come along with them too. Consider the implications of having your applications on customers’ phones. Certainly nutritional information, video links to your latest advertisements, and GPS store locators all have a cool factor, but they do little more than inform customers. Useful apps drive sales, minimize costs, and enhance the service experience. Start by putting your menu on the phone so Angela can create her “regular” order, which she shows you as a 2D barcode on her phone display. This fantastic application made by MobilizeyourEnterprise.com allows people to flash their phone in front of a scanner plugged into your POS or drive-through. Orders are instantly entered into your system without error, leaving you all that time to up-sell. For QSRs who measure order fulfillment in half seconds and strive to eliminate visible drive-through lines, this technology is an outright service revolution. No more yelling at a faceless speaker system over the noise of cars. And Angela loves the fact that she can keep texting her friends while ordering because she avoids the inconvenience of having to talk to someone. |
