Category: Mobile Commerce

Mobile payments reduce wait times for customers

These technologies can help to shorten lines, which could be promising for many industries.

Typically speaking, people hate waiting in line, and the fact that new data is indicating that mobile payments could help to cut wait times in a meaningful way is starting to boost its appeal to retailers, quick service restaurants, events, and other industries.

Any brand that has a business model based on rapid service will find faster transactions attractive.

In Chicago at the recent Interactive Customer Experience Summit from Networld Media Group, a number of important brands – including MoneyGram International, Dunkin’ Donuts and Taco Bell – came together to discuss the issue of wait times and the ways in which they could improve the customer experience. In their discussions, one of the most common denominators was that mobile payments and m-commerce helped to reduce the amount of time that a customer was required to wait in order to complete their full interaction with the brand for that session.

Taco Bell found that their mobile payments app helped to improve the customer experience in a range of ways.

Mobile Payments Lower Wait TimesAt that fast food company, approximately 75 percent of all of the orders that are taken within their locations are customized. This, according to the Taco Bell Corp associate manager for operations, Veronica Luna. However, when the mobile app was introduced by the brand, what the company discovered was that customers had a tendency to add to their items instead of taking things away. Moreover, the average check amounts are higher among orders made by way of the app.

Furthermore, the company made it possible for customers to speed up their own experiences within the store. The customers who used the mobile app to place their orders were able to use that same app to check in as soon as they arrived at the location. This signaled to employees that the individual had arrived, so that they could begin filling that order and serve them as soon as possible. This reduced the amount of waiting for food prep and meant that the customer never needed to wait in line to actually place the order.

Moreover, with mobile payments, it meant that the customer simply needed to receive the order and leave, instead of needing to wait at a till to complete the transaction. This type of opportunity is starting to be seen to an increasing degree by different companies that are able to reduce the amount of time that customers have to wait while in the physical store locations.

M-commerce in China rises yet again this year

Shopping over smartphones and tablets is moving ahead in a striking way within that country.

Emarketer has now released data that has shown that the m-commerce marketplace in China, representing shopping occurring over smartphones, tablets, and other types of mobile devices, will be reaching $334 billion, this year.

That figure represents a record breaking 49.7 percent of the total expenditure over online channels.

This prediction suggests that over 10 percent of the total retail sales in China will be occurring over m-commerce by next year. This trend in China is an important one, and it is an estimated 450 percent greater than what is going on in the United States. In the U.S., it is believed that sales over mobile commerce will rise by 32.2 percent. The retail sales over smartphones and tablets will represent 22 percent of the total online shopping. That said, from a broader perspective, they will make up only a tiny 1.6 percent of all retail sales in 2015.

This is microscopic next to China’s m-commerce portion of all sales, which is 7.9 percent.

M-Commerce on the rise in ChinaIt is clear that the Chinese retail market is seeing notably faster and greater mobile commerce growth than the trend throughout the world. That said, its own marketplace continues its direction toward the digital sphere. Online retailers are working hard to ensure that they are continually prepared to evolve as consumers expect, and they are working hard to help to bring that same ease of shopping into areas of the country that are harder to reach.

Two giants – JD.com and Alibaba – are making major investments into the rural communities of China, where there is the most room for online shopping growth within the country. In fact, the current rate of mobile commerce use is greater in the rural areas than it is in the large urban centers. This makes sense, considering that people in the major cities have a much greater availability and selection of products than those who are away from the ocean of brick and mortar shops.

That said, m-commerce needs to be implemented strategically. Even Alibaba has seen less than one tenth of its online purchases shipped to rural areas despite the massive potential there.