Don’t Forget the Customer When Implementing Beacons
Beacon technology can help a retailer understand a shopper’s buying patterns while he or she is in the store — pretty valuable information especially when it comes to understanding why certain items fly off the shelves, and others seem to grow roots. It’s also helpful in learning why some shoppers rarely buy anything at all. But the shopping experience is two way, and if there is anything technology adoption has taught us, it’s that the customer must also perceive a benefit from any implementation.
Ideally, a retailer can, through Beacon technology, offer a shopper targeted discounts and other rewards based on his or her store history. Perfect, right? It could be a win-win for both parties. The trouble, however, is that customers are hesitant to hand over access to their personal information. With recent well publicized retail POS breaches, retailers’ mobile security systems are under close scrutiny.
In “Best Practices: Beacon Location and Security and Encryption,” James Buchheim, CEO of Stick and Find agrees that care should be taken when deploying beacons to ensure their infrastructure cannot be used by unauthorized third parties. He suggests:
- Using a non-deployer unique UUID
- Ensuring Major (which identifies location) and Minor (which identifies location within a location) schema is not decodable by 3rd parties (random)
- Change Major and Minor frequently (example: once per minute)
- Deploy and configure with a secure, private password
Retailers should also consider adding data encryption to their beacon solutions. And, applications that trigger value transactions should use encrypted beacons. Of course, publicizing this to shoppers is critical for customer buy-in. A recent study on Apple’s iBeacon found that while the technology can be quite effective when implemented well, over saturation and irrelevant messages can be “disastrous” for a brand.
For retailers to realize beacon technology’s full potential, customers have to embrace it. Buchheim offered four excellent tips:
- Always offer customer value in return for knowing their location. Only two years ago, many retailers dismissed the value of discounts, coupons, etc., with their shoppers. They (erroneously) believed that customers would simply adopt technology for its own sake. What happened was shoppers brought their own technology into the store and started comparison shopping online. Today’s savvy retailers know that customer incentives must be part of their approach.
- Ensure customers fully understand how their location data used/recorded. No surprises. Customers will perceive retailers as “spying” on them if there is not full disclosure.
- Take steps to protect live or historical data in mobile app or other platform. Market your commitment to security.
- Do not share user location data with 3rd parties without permission(s). A no-brainer, but always good to reiterate.
Bottomline: It’s always important that an IT solution address a particular problem or challenge. But with beacon technology — in which information is pushed to customers based on their personal shopping habits — that need is even more acute.
