Is Not Waiting in Line the Ultimate Mobile Customer Reward?

Star­bucks and oth­er restau­rant brands think so.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Many retail­ers offer rewards for their mobile cus­tomers as incen­tives to engage with the brand. But one such reward that just got a shot in the arm from a major U.S. chain doesn’t come with points or free­bies. Instead, it spares cus­tomers the agony of wait­ing in line for their orders. And experts say this con­ve­nience fac­tor is sim­ply a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion of the mobile space as con­sumers grow more and more com­fort­able with mobile com­merce.


A recent announce­ment from cof­fee behe­moth Star­bucks Cof­fee Com­pa­ny could be a sig­nal that the con­ve­nience evo­lu­tion is offi­cial­ly upon us.

To wit: Star­bucks has shared a num­ber of cus­tomer ini­tia­tives it says will “fur­ther trans­form and ele­vate the Star­bucks Expe­ri­ence in Hol­i­day 2014 and beyond.”

That includes mobile order­ing, which will begin in Port­land with a U.S. roll­out to fol­low in 2015, as well as a “Star­bucks for Life” con­test and an inter­ac­tive Roast­ery and Tast­ing Room slat­ed to open in Seat­tle in Decem­ber.

Accord­ing to a press release, Star­bucks will intro­duce mobile order and pay in stores in the Port­land area before the end of the year. This will enable cus­tomers to place orders in advance and pick them up at a select­ed loca­tion.

Mobile order­ing will deliv­er con­ve­nience, fre­quen­cy and speed of ser­vice and, over time, become the fastest and eas­i­est way for cus­tomers to order, pay and pick up their pur­chas­es,” Star­bucks says in the release.

A Star­bucks rep did not respond to a request for com­ment.

[Last hol­i­day sea­son] cus­tomers researched, com­pared prices and then bought the brands and items they want­ed online, fre­quent­ly uti­liz­ing a mobile device to do so,” said Howard Schultz, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of Star­bucks, in a state­ment. “Since that time, we have been focused on rad­i­cal­ly redefin­ing the Star­bucks retail expe­ri­ence for our part­ners, cus­tomers and stores.  As a result of the work we’ve done, Star­bucks is poised for a great hol­i­day – our inno­va­tion pipeline is strong and we have a num­ber of ini­tia­tives ready to launch dur­ing the hol­i­day and into cal­en­dar 2015 and beyond.”

As a result, the com­pa­ny says it has “com­plete­ly reimag­ined the hol­i­day expe­ri­ence in stores for this shop­ping sea­son, stay­ing true to many time-hon­ored tra­di­tions, such as the arrival of the icon­ic red Star­bucks cups in stores, while adding inno­v­a­tive and rel­e­vant prod­ucts for hol­i­day shop­pers,” along­side the pump­kin spice lattes HBO star John Oliv­er hates so much.

Star­bucks is also launch­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty for “a select num­ber of cus­tomers” to win “Star­bucks for Life” by using their Star­bucks Cards or pay­ing with their mobile devices.

In addi­tion to pay­ments, Star­bucks says its mobile cus­tomers can reap addi­tion­al ben­e­fits like access to spe­cial events, as well as sneak pre­views of new prod­ucts and pro­mo­tions and addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to earn and redeem rewards across the Star­bucks fam­i­ly of brands.

Accord­ing to reports, 15 per­cent of Star­bucks’ Q3 rev­enue was from mobile trans­ac­tions, which equals about 6 mil­lion week­ly orders.

Star­bucks is cer­tain­ly not alone in try­ing to make mobile cus­tomers’ lives eas­i­er. Domino’s recent­ly added voice order­ing and a vir­tu­al Siri-like assis­tant to its app.

In 2012, Tex Mex chain Moe’s South­west Grill rolled out a mobile and online order­ing prod­uct to give cus­tomers “a more effi­cient and user-friend­ly way to pre-order and pre-pay for their meal,” a release says. Per Google Play, the Moe’s app has between 100,000 and 500,000 installs. Bur­ri­to chain Chipo­tle, too, has an order­ing app.

Smooth­ie chain Jam­ba Juice teamed up with Pay­Pal to test an order-ahead fea­ture for iPhone users in  2013.

And reports say both Taco Bell and McDonald’s are test­ing their own order-ahead apps, although a McDonald’s rep did not respond to a request for com­ment either.

In addi­tion, cof­fee and baked goods brand Dunkin’ Donuts recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed the two-year anniver­sary of its app and eight mil­lion down­loads with an “Appiver­sary” Twit­ter sweep­stakes that reward­ed fans with mGifts.

Fur­ther, Scott Hudler, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al con­sumer engage­ment for Dunkin’ Brands told Momen­tol­ogy, “We are plan­ning to test mobile order­ing in the fourth quar­ter and we antic­i­pate adding the order­ing fea­ture to our exist­ing mobile app in 2015. With the growth of mobile and all of the great things it can do today that we could­n’t do two years ago, mobile order­ing is the log­i­cal next step. For the con­sumer, there is a huge ben­e­fit to skip the line, and improve order accu­ra­cy and speed.”

Senior dig­i­tal strat­e­gy advi­sor Augus­tine Fou says it is all about effi­cien­cy for the cus­tomer.

Even deliv­ery is not opti­mal since you don’t know exact­ly when the guy will show up and some­times it may come dam­aged, etc.,” he says. “[But with order-ahead apps, the] con­sumer is in con­trol and they can walk over to get it, espe­cial­ly if the app tells them it is ready for pick up.”

What’s more, Star­bucks can do this at scale, which will give the brand a sense of demand and it could per­haps lat­er imple­ment surge pric­ing like Uber or offer cus­tomers the option to pay more for faster deliv­ery or, con­verse­ly, fol­low Amazon’s lead and give cus­tomers an option to choose slow­er deliv­ery speeds for low­er costs and/or just to save them­selves logis­tic stress, he says.

Inter­net mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant Paul Chaney agrees.

Any­thing that will ease the pain of stand­ing in line, espe­cial­ly the long lines often expe­ri­enced at Star­bucks, is worth try­ing.”

Chaney says mobile order-ahead is just anoth­er phase of the con­ve­nience evo­lu­tion fos­tered by the growth of mobile and the advent of pay­ment apps such as Apple Pay.

Any tech­nol­o­gy that can make our lives sim­pler and eas­i­er to man­age will doubt­less have its day in the sun,” Chaney says.

For mobile, that day has come.” For her part, Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at inter­ac­tive mar­ket­ing firm Enlight­en, says it comes down to cus­tomer behav­ior and the degree to which mobile pay­ment is already ingrained in con­sumers’ lives.

These types of ser­vices res­onate with heavy mobile users,” she says. “That bodes well for brands like Star­bucks that are going all-in on tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal inno­va­tion.”


What do you think is the best reward for mobile cus­tomers?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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