Tag: dunkin donuts

Mobile payments reduce wait times for customers

| August 4, 2015

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.

Can Dunkin’ Donuts replicate the mobile payments success of Starbucks

| December 5, 2014

The question that many are now asking is whether or not the achievement is of the brand or the system.

Dunkin’ Donuts has had its own mobile app for a while now, and this application allows smartphone users to be able to accumulate loyalty points as well as make mobile payments in order to complete their transactions while in stores, but recent data is now causing many to ask whether the same successes seen at Starbucks could be possible in this rival franchise.

Some data regarding the usage of this mobile app has provided insight into this coffee shop trend.

According to a report issued by BI Intelligence, which provided then results of some number crunching with regards to the data that Dunkin’ Donuts has made available, there are a number of points that can be understood about the way that the mobile payments app is being used at that company’s locations. Though that company does not report the actual dollar volume that is achieved as a result of transactions over mobile devices, the data that they have provided still shows some interesting trends.

The Dunkin’ Donuts data has provided some indications with regards to the traction of the mobile payments app.

Mobile Payments - Dunkin' DonutsAmong the points reported by BI Intelligence included the following:

• The Dunkin’ Donuts mobile app has, according to the company’s own figures, already been downloaded more than 10 million times. It was originally launched in August 2012.
• The Starbucks application is currently reported to be maintaining 12 million active users in North America.
• At Starbucks, more than 15 percent of all of the transactions completed in the United States locations are m-payments.

The BI Intelligence report stated that one of the primary drivers of success of the Starbucks mobile payments app is the company’s loyalty program. Dunkin’ Donuts has clearly used a similar strategy in encouraging the adoption and use of its own application. When using that app, customers are able to build “DD Perks” rewards points, which can later be redeemed in order to obtain free items such as beverages. QR codes are also central to the verification process for transactions in the apps of both companies.