Make your information go two ways

When we were at ISC West last year, our suite at the Wynn had a mini-bar innovation that was...surprising. If you picked up the pack of peanuts, or any other drink or snack, from the tray and didn't put it back in its place within 30 seconds, it would be added automatically to your room tab.

A TripAdvisor visitor to the Wynn put it this way: "The refrigerator in each room is now "wired" to be touch sensitive. Moving any item for more than a few seconds, incurs a charge automatically, whether the item consumed or not!"

Looks like Nebraska Furniture Mart is using a similar technology from MTI Interactive called Lift  (NRF STORES magazine, December) to activate a product presentation on a nearby display screen whenever a customer picks up a cell phone or digital camera.

It's useful for the Furniture Mart to be able to present videos on a screen to a customer with the product in their hands, but wouldn't it be oh-so-much better for them to integrate Lift with their video system so they could collect information rather than just sending it out? I know, it's a paradigm shift.

Imagine this: Lift also triggers recording of surveillance video, and could record customer reactions to, say, a series of three sales presentations so they could determine which was most effective and then play that one more often. Ditch the presentation everyone walks away from, keep the one that engages people and leads to sales (link in the POS, too, so you can review different time periods with different sales presentations being served...

Lift is new technology, and it's impressive. But it's old-school thinking to think that making a sales pitch is enough. Let the customer passively tell you how you're doing, and you're in a whole new millenium.

Abigail