By BRIAN X. CHEN
A Black Friday visit to the Apple Store in Palo Alto, Calif., offered a glimpse of the new technology Apple is using to speed purchases.
A store employee, Diego Aguirre, demonstrated an internal iPhone application that, for the last few weeks, has had the ability to show the in-store location of a shopper who has come to pick up a purchase.
An iPhone owner can use the free Apple Store app to shop before entering the store. When she arrives, the app’s location feature alerts store workers on their iPhones, and they can find her and bring over her purchases. Sixteen customers used the app’s location feature to claim gear at the Palo Alto store on Friday, Mr. Aguirre said.
Apple retail employees have already been able to locate customers who request assistance in the store, using a system similar to the button you press on an airplane to get help from a flight attendant. IPads are mounted next to products in the store showing information and purchase options. Customers can tap a button on one of these iPads to request employee assistance, and a message appears saying a representative is on the way.
The iPhones of Apple employees show these customer requests and give employees the option to respond to them. The app then shows an illustration of the shopping floor and highlights the customer’s location in red.
This feature allows shoppers to ask for assistance when they feel comfortable doing so, unlike in other retail stores where customers are hounded by employees eager to make a sale, Mr. Aguirre said.
“It’s more toward customer experience,” Mr. Aguirre said. “We don’t want to feel like we’re hassling our customers to shop. We want them to feel at home.”
When a customer makes a purchase, the employee can complete the transaction with the iPhone, and the store records will show that he or she made the sale, Mr. Aguirre said. The iPhones carried by employees are outfitted with a thick, black case containing a credit card reader, a bar code scanner and a battery pack.
To date, Apple has opened 358 brick-and-mortar stores worldwide, and they have been instrumental to the company’s growing success.