When Starbucks set out to improve its customer
experience, it found that more than a third of its
customers are active users of smartphones. The
company set out to implement several features and
improvements that would appeal to this segment
of its customer base. First, Starbucks implemented
a technology that allows customers to pay using
a smartphone app. The app is integrated with the
Starbucks Card system, which allows regular customers
to pay with a pre-paid and rechargeable
card at any Starbucks branch. When customers
make a purchase using the app, a cashier scans a
bar code displayed on the phone, and the resulting
sale is charged to the customer's Starbucks Card account. Customers report that paying using this
app, available for all major smartphone operating
systerns, is much faster than traditional forms
of payment. In its first 15 months of use, the
Starbucks mobile payment system processed 42
million transactions.