Auto-Parts Chain Goes Modern, Stays Frugal - ' Kiosks as CRM Units ' (
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The first thing the kiosks replace are the paper catalogues where customers would look up the car's make and model to identify the precise part number needed. A touchscreen kiosk handles that task, and it's integrated into the store's network.
"The kiosk is talking in real time with the store server, so if a particular item that is normally stocked is out of stock in the store, it will suggest a substitute item or tell the customer to see a sales associate," Buresh said.
CSK is not alone is pushing kiosk capabilities. To read more, click here.
That sales associate will have access to a separate system—called the surround-store system—that can look into every other store in the chain and check inventory.
All of the kiosk's programming is done in Flash, and it literally speaks to the customer in either English or Spanish, which Buresh said is a new capability yet to be released to any of the stores. The system is designed to run a wide range of videotapes to customers—ultimately including demonstration videos—but the initial deployment is limited to vendor advertisements.
The chain is also looking into flat-screen LCD monitors that Buresh is having mounted in store ceilings. Those kiosk displays are intended to have more elaborate multimedia segments about two minutes long such as "entertaining loops, interviews with some drivers and some product demonstrations."
The level of demo complexity that can be delivered in two minutes limits the types of auto-equipment installations that can be demonstrated. Changing a car battery could be presented, for example, but not changing a brake, Buresh said.
A significant percentage of CSK's customers are mechanics and hobbyists who might be working on several cars. But CSK has discontinued its manual loyalty card program and doesn't have any immediate plans to reinstate it. "We had one and it didn't generate any loyalty that we could measure," Buresh said. "It's not something that we put high on our radar screen."
The more data a retailer gathers, the more data a retailer may be forced to use. To read about a frightening scenario with huge potential CRM concern for retailers, click here.
CSK does have the ability to identify customers by telephone number, but Buresh said it's typically not worth the customer's time to do that. "Keying in two digits of the year, the make and the model is extremely fast. It actually takes longer to locate it on a list [of recent cars the customer has asked about] than to just type it in," he said.
But CSK is putting a premium on the new, advanced search capabilities of the incoming network. "What we are able to do with the new server and the new disk drives is to go to a greatly expanded parts catalogue, with thumbnail pictures of the products and related items," Buresh said.
The next step beyond smart kiosks are kiosks that know where the customer is and tweak ads accordingly. To read more about the latest "smart carts," click here.
"When you come into the stores, you'll find these flatscreen monitors sitting on the counter. Click on alternators in a specific sequence, and you can get additional information as to why this alternator is better than another," he said. "We developed that internally with electronic feeds from every one of our more than 300 vendors. That's more than one million parts."
CSK used to outsource its search function, but it found that the new network will allow its employees to do it themselves. "When we looked at all of these questions about tailoring it to a particular product, we thought we could do a better job at less cost," he said, adding that some of the questions include, "Does it have an air conditioner? … What size engine? Does it have an electronic ignition?"
Next Page: The hardware and infrastructure needed for such advanced search.
