Something exciting is brewing for NRF24

As retail’s golden quarter draws to a close, we’ve set our sights on one of the biggest retail conferences of the year: NRF’24 in New York City. With hundreds of speakers from the industry’s biggest brands, and more than 40,000 people attending from across the world, it’s the perfect place to share knowledge, gain new insights, and debrief from one of the most challenging holiday retail periods in memory.  

NRF’24 is also where we’ll be demonstrating Webex Connect’s mobile ordering coffee bar experience at Café Cisco, which showcases the richer customer communications delivered by the simplicity and intuitiveness of Webex Connect, part of Webex CPaaS Solutions.  

What is Webex Connect’s mobile ordering coffee bar experience exactly?  

First, it’s important to explain that the Webex Connect mobile ordering experience isn’t a smartphone app, unlike many modern retail communication solutions.  

The mobile ordering experience at Café Cisco uses the drag-and-drop workflows, third-party systems integrations, and multi-channel digital communications within Webex Connect to connect customers with businesses for seamless retail experiences – in plain English, allowing retailers to engage with their consumers and associates on their channel of choice, with no local app installation required. In this case, we’ve applied our technology to showcase a retail mobile ordering experience.  

How does Webex Connect’s mobile ordering coffee bar experience work?  

We built our mobile-ordering journey to demonstrate what’s possible when you take the best features of rich messaging channels—in this case, Apple Messages for Business and Google Business Messages—to create exciting new digital customer experiences.  

The customer journey starts by scanning a QR code that triggers the experience. Using Webex Connect’s intelligent device detection, the customer is instantly offered a diverse drinks menu through either Apple Business Messages or Google Business Messages on their native messaging client. With a couple of taps on pre-populated options using rich list pickers or media carousels, customers can go from decision to purchase in just a few seconds.   

While the last stage of the ordering process requires customers to personalize their order by inputting their name, this is the first and only time the customer is expected to enter any textual information. Up to this point, they’ve simply been asked to hit pre-populated options. This makes the experience highly accessible and, above all, faster than any app requiring login information. On the business end, Webex Connect bundles and passes the order information to the relevant order management system (OMS), and, in this case, the barista making the drinks. The barista can even update the order with an approximate wait time, ensuring the customer is kept in the loop through two-way communications.  

What’s more, this wait time offers a unique opportunity to send relevant marketing materials to the customer and ask them for their real-time feedback. Café Cisco can even collect contact details, such as an email address, into an integrated CRM to make the customer’s next interaction even quicker (don’t worry, this is for demo purposes only – we’re not keeping any data beyond the show).  

But this experience is just one of countless use cases powered by Webex Connect’s centralized communication platform. 

Webex Connect: Advanced communications technology made simple 

Webex Connect is a centralized cloud communications platform that automates end-to-end customer journeys and creates richer experiences.  

Through its multi-channel communications support and integrations with wide-ranging third-party systems, the platform is a one-stop-shop for “just in time” interactions that drive better CX.   

It’s how our mobile ordering experience allows one-click coffee orders at speed and supports rich, two-way communication, ensuring customers are kept in the loop and have a single point of contact throughout the buyer’s journey.  

Why Café Cisco matters 

Webex Connect’s mobile ordering coffee bar experience is important. This is because whether you’re ordering coffee or airline tickets, receiving a package, or talking to a hotel concierge, it demonstrates this technology’s near-limitless potential applications to enable automated two-way, digital interactions between brands and their customers.  

In the US alone, customers are more selective than ever about which brands they decide to spend with—with 73% of consumers expecting to cut their non-food spending this year, up from 59% last year. So, automating end-to-end customer interactions and offering a seamless experience can make all the difference to your market share.  

NRF’24 runs from January 14-16 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Visit us in the Cisco booth 5639 grab a coffee and see what Webex Connect can do for you.