Convenience is the word of this century when it comes to buying and selling. Convenience is in it’s own way a commodity. Banks, restaurants, hospitals and sports stadiums are all cottoning onto the fact that, the less hassle a customer has when it comes to paying for their products and services, the more likely they are to buy. This is plain as day for everyone but we needed a push for this kind of practical element to go worldwide.
Sadly, the push came in the form of a virus that made contact a little sketchy. This led to more and more people wanting one-click payment, scanning payment services and for customers to somehow get their meals without needing to go close to other paying customers in cafes, restaurants and fast food places. How can we learn from this?
What is convenience nowadays?
Since everything is faster, easier and more enjoyable than previous decades, what really is convenience? You can’t slip out the red carpet for your customers, you can’t wash behind their ears and carry their groceries out to the parking lot every single time. In other words, you can’t do everything for them, and they don’t expect you to. What they do want is quicker and shorter processes. Think about how we used to shop.
We used to put things in the cart, move on to the cashier, then pay for our things, take the cart outside to our car, etc. Then we went to be able to scan our own items at the checkout. Then we want to use proprietary machines to beep the food before we put it in our cart. Now we have ‘walk-out’ stores cropping up.
This is being done by Tesco, a British brand. Whereby you login using their app at the door, then pick up items without scanning them and simply walk out. The store will figure out the payment from the food shelves weighing less. Amazon Fresh is also a cashier and checkout-less store. Convenience then, means truly futuristic payment, in that you don’t physically make any at all.
Scan and go
During the times of covid-19, many of us didn’t want to shop because it would mean having to touch high traffic areas and objects, such as the checkout and credit card reader. But thanks to different types of payment solutions that businesses use now, scanning seems to be the way forward. The credit card machine of old is pretty much dead. No more needing to punch in your card number to get served, you can simply swipe your card.
This is why so many banks and businesses that give credit cards, are using special swiping chips which can be read incredibly fast and authenticated by their networks. And that is the main trick, the network behind the transaction that makes sure, fast payment is still a secure payment. If you are a business that relies on a fast turnaround of service, such as a restaurant or cafe, then you should be going all in on scanning technology.
KYC with rocket boosters
Know your customer or KYC is launching at a rapid pace. This is when you essentially, work to build a profile of each individual customer, not just a group, demographic, spending habits, patterns, etc. But you make a unique profile for each customer, and then target them with products they are more likely to say yes to. Why is this convenient?
It saves customers from having to search for products they want, but can’t find in your online store. Or it could be that they would like to shop within a certain price range, you can take their activity on your website i.e. using price range finders, to then show them products through email marketing, that are within their affordability.
This is something that comes with grey territory because you can’t be seen to spy on your customers, but if they accept your cookies policy, you can study how they use your website for UX design purposes. This can lead to you showing them pages of products they would like first. In other words, you curate lists of products set to their preferences without them having to set them.
Customers want speed, more than anything else. The fewer people, checkboxes and notifications that stand in their way from the things they want, the more they are likely to purchase. What do you think will be the next big move in shopper’s convenience.
