Vision

Innovation in Customer Engagement Technology

GraeLaws Creativity, Self-service, Strategy, Touch technology, Vision , , , , , , ,

CET Triangle

The customer whom is engaged in the retail experience is charmed by the story unfolding, enraptured by the spectacle and ultimately persuaded to make in store purchases by well-placed cues, triggers and props. Retailers use a variety of technological levers to assist them in this pursuit – to get the customer touching, listening, looking and learning for themselves about the products in store. But many companies fail to choose the best tools for getting the job done right first time. Graeme Laws puts forward the case that technology alone is not a panacea for success but is part of an ongoing journey of experimentation. It requires co-creation, with the customer fully participating, in order to deliver sustainable commercial benefits.

Retail theatre requires a decent script to accompany the props and set

The idea of CET [Customer Engagement Technology] is to provide a useful interface for shoppers to get what they want and in doing so have a good time – right? Usually this is achieved through the use of a customer’s eyes, fingertips, gestures or voice. Think video walls, self-serve kiosks, tablets, digital signage, holograms, projections, gesture controlled retail gamification, RFID identification, QR code/NFC couponing etc… In my pursuit of the ultimate shopping experience through CET, I have travelled the world, seeing the wild and the downright stupid put into practice.

People and technology are not always compatible

I have become fascinated with observing shoppers as they try to go about their business often hindered by CET. I am not suggesting that I lurk in the aisles like a shifty shoplifter – though this is a sure-fire way of testing the standard of CCTV technology in branch – more so I take every opportunity to observe the conjunction of people and technology as I do my own shopping. I’m kind of like a secret shopper without a company credit card to support my clandestine observational missions – incidentally I am available for hire should your company wish to employ the services of a CET analyst. Just let me loose on your market with a credit card and a digital notepad and see what I come back with…

Weapons of mass engagement

Sometimes I will observe a great piece of retail theatre – a sheer delight to watch and to participate in. There are other times when the ‘experience’ so utterly fails to engage the customer that one feels like praying for peak oil and the subsequent global black-out to hurry up and stop this terrible retail technology nexus in its tracks. If it is not poorly planned click and collect services, or sub-standard digital signage, it is armies of in-store assistants brandishing iPads like weapons of mass engagement. As a busy shopper I find BYOD in store acts like garlic on them…

Knowing what ‘good’ looks like

In spite of the aforementioned diatribe I should go on record as saying that I am a fan-boy of all forms of CET. I go looking for the stuff – my friends and family report back with something new they have seen. Its like trainspotting but with LEDs and sensors replacing the smoke and whistles – I make notes whilst out and about on a day off. Why? Because CET matters – what happens in store is a reflection of the whole industry – you make one another look great/bad. In CET terms ‘good’ should be aesthetically designed, offering a compelling reason to be used and ought to deliver a satisfactory customer experience. If it does not tick all of these boxes then it should be trialled and shelved – excuse the pun – with a label on the box saying ‘not good’.

Retail innovation is a learning process

And right here is my own dichotomy – on the one hand I cannot abide a lousy customer experience using an ill-conceived notion of technological connectivity. Yet as a futurist in tech innovation I feel I should embrace rapid prototyping, live beta trials and the occasional subsequent failure. The good news is I do willingly accept my role as a CET guinea pig. My only proviso is that should the CET project fail to deliver, it should do so fast and moves forward with a hefty lessons learned log into the next phase. ‘Test fast, fail fast & adjust fast’ – Tom Peters.

The shock and awe in CET Strategy

For many companies that have invested heavily, CET projects are treated like an all or nothing commercial strategy. Like a digital end game – I can see the red, ‘go nuclear’ button flashing on their blessed corporate iPads as I write this. ‘Gotta light the whole goddam store up with enough LED to give everyone a tan’. Their mistake is that there is often nothing in the plan for it to evolve. It’s as if their plan was designed, like a fly trapped in amber, for those screens and GUI’s to be preserved for eternity in their locale, never degrading, never transforming and, worst of all never being used. Yet consumerism is a by-product of capitalism and moves quickly and absolutely. Consumerism is also but one element of the retail consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively through campaigns and promotions. Its very nature is transient – a temporary material construct and should be able to transmogrify in perpetuity as a reflection of the zeitgeist. Sadly not all companies have a budget for that – it was all used up on a 6 metre x 12 metre touch enabled video wall that requires a step ladder to make best use of. That was one real example of where Cap-Ex flew out of the door as CET came in the window.

Value-in-use

The reality is customers – people like you and I – vote with our senses when confronted by new things. Sure we will try them out but ultimately we are governed by our own attitudes toward them. This perception is based on usefulness of the CET and the ease of its use. If it looks hard and/or doesn’t deliver on the promise – of speed, quality, variety, fun – we vote with our feet and leg it. Too many businesses focus only on what it looks like as opposed to what it actually delivers. The bitterness of poor CET lingers longer after the sweetness of the products in store have been forgotten. A good CET strategy should carry the experience out of the store and into the customer’s social sphere. By virtue of the experience being evangelised by the user they take your brand into an intimate realm of personal endorsement and recommendation – the holy grail of marketing no less. We like to talk about good experiences, but we also like a good whinge! You have to get it right – or run the risk of your reputation being less than one step ahead of its own disastrous PR debris!

3 Golden Rules of CET strategy

I would highly recommend any company embarking on a CET project to remember the three golden rules of engagement strategy:

  • If you promise to deliver an engaging experience then come good on that promise – if it’s about efficiency it better be quicker, if it’s about innovation then it better be shiny and new, if it’s about fun then please delight me.
  • Answer the questions by filling in these gaps before you start:
    1. Who are we engaging with? Our target user group/profile is………?
    2. What should the eventual outcome be of CET usage? The customer/company takeaway is …….?
    3. When should this engagement process occur? It features in the ………. stage of the buyer decision process.
    4. Where is the best place in store to make this happen? To maximise the chance of positive engagement it should be situated………
    5. Why is this CET in use at all? Our reason for utilising this is because it will……..
    6. How can we develop this experience over time? Our phase two and three plans include……
  • Do your competitive analysis – both vertically and horizontally. Observe cross-over strategies of other complimentary businesses – people that that buy X should buy our product – how are these purveyors using CET?
  • If you are able to follow these steps then the user experience of your CET project will be successful. Your place in the Halls of CET greatness will be assured for that moment – but remember it needs to keep being refreshed. Once it is installed please invite me along to try it out – me and my family love tech. There is a symbiotic relationship between fun and shopping. As a consumer I would like to see both back in the high street.

    Next Post:

    Bleeding Edge Technology – When Tinkering Goes Bad. By virtue of its proximity to the tech event horizon, consumer driven, innovative gadgets are prone to being stretched beyond reasonable and practicable use. Graeme Laws will pose searching questions; Are you prepared to dabble in the grey world of Beta Engagement Technologies? From Google Glass to MYO armbands via transparent touch screens and indoor ‘delivery’ quad copters– there are plenty of toys to play with but how ‘Enterprise’ are they? Do we really want to take it from the lab or livingroom straight into the workplace?

Mixed discipline innovation

GraeLaws Creativity, Improvement & Change, Innovation, Manufacturing, MBA, Project Management, Sales & Marketing, Strategy, Vision , , , , , , ,

https://i0.wp.com/www.snapfinancial.com/images/busy-office.jpg

A team built with mixed skills and know-how will always be stronger than a group-think silo. Business insight is a combination of looking at an opportunity through multiple lenses and forming a view of what these multiple observations mean. Successful businesses look, listen and learn from as many sources as possible. This means an extended network is highly desirable. The easiest way to extend the network is bring in different people for divergent thinking on shared business problems. Right brainer, left brainer, activist, theorist – they all create balance and augment team and the enterprise in which they work.

Follow this link to an article on the subject by Bill Gross, CEO of Idealab

Idea generation for innovation

GraeLaws Creativity, Innovation, Manufacturing, Strategy, Vision , , , ,

There are many techniques for developing new ideas. For some businesses like 3M, IDEO and Frog, these techniques are ingrained into the very DNA of the company culture and structure. But what about the business that knows it needs to change, how do they do it? The World is filled with great companies, endowed with great technical experience in their respective fields. Yet despite their successes they are without the technique to realise their future aspirations? May great ideas wither on the vine through an inability to harvest them efficiently.

Often an organisation is not really aware of the true creative capability of its workforce. This is particularly the case for large organisations with physically demanding tasks – such as a manufacturing plant for automotive. In this type of environment you have highly dexterous workforce engaged in a semi autonomous process. Whilst being engaged fully in the repetitive tasks it is possible for the highly motivated employee to have exceptional moments of divergent thinking.  It is as if the body in autopilot enables the operative to hand over a portion of their creative mind to musings on any number of technical or social scenarios. So how can a business capitalise on this untapped human resource?

Is idea creation best encouraged through brainstorming, idea competitions, idea factories, open sourcing?

Here are some methods of generating good ideas

LCD contact lens

GraeLaws Creativity, Vision , , , , , , , ,

I have always believed that the contact lens would make a very efficient display. Add a little NFC and 4G and you have a very personal signage solution. One that is only in your face…



http://phys.org/news/2012-12-breakthrough-augmented-reality-contact-lens.html

http://www.inavateonthenet.net/rss/article/54868/LCD-contact-lens-superimposes-images-on-to-normal-view.aspx



http://www.fastcompany.com/1623012/will-smart-contact-lenses-be-bluetooth
-headsets-future

 

greenchief on Nov 23, 2:38 PM said: The Smartphone will disappear I agree with Nicholas that the smartphone as we know it will all but disappear in the next few years. Mobile computing is transforming into disruptive technologies that we can’t even begin to imagine. It will come to us in different hybrid forms of hardware. The merging of these devices will be driven by the imaginative young at heart who have not let the constrictions of conventional thinking fog their innovation. Fact; Nevada is the 1st state to approve self-driving cars. Fact; California’s Governor Brown signs into state law self-driving car, last month. Fact; General Motors and China create a joint-venture for self-driving cars to be used in new 21st century eco-cities now under construction in China. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/13/tianjin-eco-city_n_806972.html#s221860

Fact; The GM EN-V is control by a brain wave helmet and is now operational. http://youtu.be/0tiHwzGsotA

Fact; NeuroSky has developed a brainwave helmet for $200 and developers from around the world are merging the technology with development boards from Arduino for $50 and creating new applications such and brainwave controlled smart homes, brainwave controlled vehicles, brainwave controlled flying drones and brainwave controlled toys.

http://store.neurosky.com/products/mindset

http://mashable.com/2012/11/13/orbit-helicopter-brain/

http://www.freetronics.com/collections/arduino/products/etherten#.UKg56IfAdBM

http://www.arduino.cc/

Fact; Panasonic in Japan is building a 21st energy city with advanced intelligent software operation every aspect of the community. http://inhabitat.com/fujisawa-smart-town-planned-for-japan-to-be-most-advanced-eco-city-in-the-world/

The real secret is not in the hardware but in the software. Everyone is going to open source which can be monetized yet greatly reducing development time and cost. Even IBM’s new super computer that operates in petaflops uses open source. The military brainwave program uses open source.

http://www.top500.org/

http://neurogadget.com/2012/09/19/darpas-threat-detection-system-combines-120-megapixel-camera-with-b-alert-eeg-headset/4813

Respectfully Jefferey Alan Wilson Sr. CEO/President entelitech

Arif on Nov 25, 2:24 AM said: Not a new thing!!!. Few years back ‘MicroOptical’ introduced this to use it in Hospitals, mainly for surgeons while doing a surgery. MicroOptical’s MD-6 Critical Data Viewer displays vital signs where you need them most — right before your eyes. Without obstructing your natural field of vision, the viewer duplicates the live display of your monitor as a floating image positioned a few feet in front of you — displaying vitals in real-time. By keeping both patient and critical data in your hand-eye axis, the viewer allows you to view vital signs repeatedly without having to look away at a monitor. By surgeons can view two sets of critical data, such as vital signs and cath lab images

http://www.vrealities.com/md-6.html