As mobile phones have evolved from clunky handbag bricks to lean, mean computing machines, the retail stores that sell the coveted communication devices have also seen massive transitions said Christopher Krywulak, President and CEO of IQMetrix in his keynote at the firm’s Wireless Retail Summit in Scottsdale Arizona on Monday.
Reminiscing about his youth, Krywulak recalled the summer months he had spent at his grandfather’s farm, popping down to Joe Marshall’s general store and watching Joe determine all the pricing on a whim – a long gone age where it was the retailer and not the customer who held all the power.
Wireless, according to Krywulak, has likewise gone from a stage where powerful retailers held all the cards to a model where customers are now king, in a series of three waves.
The first Wave of Wireless, said Krywulak, was that of the bag phone when everything was more focused on the transaction itself, from opening stores, selling phones and advertising.
Next came the second wave, bringing smartphones and data in with the tide. Most are still riding this particular wave, with growth potential looking tsunami like with penetration still resting at just 20%. But with smartphones being more of a “PC in your pocket” than a phone, retailers have had to shift focus from simple transactions to customer service, operational efficiency and employee development, not to mention online ads and social networks.
Indeed, with more choice and more options, there has been a paradigm shift in the consumer’s favor, with retention of customers becoming a key concern to operators and retailers alike, as phone refresh cycles shorten to some 14 months or so.
Even as retailers get to grip with the pull of the second wave’s current, however, a third breaking wave threatens to crash down just behind it, bringing tablets to the mobile table.
Apple’s iPad, of course, has been something of a tipping point for tablets, just as the iPhone before it was for smartphones, with the 10” device having sold three million units in the first 80 days.
Following on from the iPad’s success, a slew of companies have announced tablets of their very own, including BlackBerry’s PlayBook, the Dell Streak, the Samsung Galaxy tab and a plethora of other Android tablets in the pipeline.
Now, mused Krywulak, retailers could sell a plan for both a smartphone and a tablet, with the accessory options expanding rapidly and turning ye old phone shoppe into a bleeding edge computer store.
Even big players like Microsoft and Apple have opened their own retail stores, with Krywulak positing that Google’s greatest mistake with the Nexus One phone was that consumer’s all want a hands-on buying experience and couldn’t achieve this by simply ordering the phone online.
The Apple store, noted Krywulak, was always a veritable hub of activity packed with customers having a great customer experience. This was achieved in no small measure by the firm implementing what Krywulak calls the “Disney approach,” with everything from the front of the house to the back of house store management being customer-centric.
Breaking down customer experience, Krywulak laid out three key steps including awareness (entertainment, information, education), interaction (browsing, analysis, decisions) and purchase. He also mentioned IQMetrix’ XQ and RQ4 solutions which address the front and the back of the house respectively.
“Are we paddling hard enough to catch this Third Wave? Can we ride it?” he asked, answering his own question by declaring “Let’s ride the Third Wave together… in style.”
“My grandpa would be very happy to see how far the retail and technological spaces have come: the customer has plenty of choice and plenty of control. That’s why the customer experience matters,” he concluded.
