The clientele for any of the super-premium ice cream chains tends to be affluent and younger, a demographic that is comfortable with PDA-phone hybrids, instant messaging and a wide range of gadgets.

That opens up possibilities including sending alerts to customers—traveling anywhere in the United States—when they are geographically near any Cold Stone store, along with a special discount on their favorite flavor combination.

Integration with car navigation systems is also a possibility, with alerts dispatched when the driver is both near a store geographically at the time the CRM system says that customer typically buys ice cream.

The system knows that a particular customer's purchases typically are between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., for example, on Fridays.

The system could send an alert if that customer is near a Cold Stone during that time, even if that customer is traveling on business.

If it's linked with a strong discount on a known flavor or topping combination, the pitch could be quite powerful.

Darren Tristano is the managing director for Technomic Information Services, a major market research data company focusing on the food service industry.

Tristano said much of the focus in the scoop shop market is not only on the kind of customer that is involved, but on the kind of purchase this would be.

"The important thing for them is changing the number of impulse buys. Ice cream falls in the impulse buy category. Anything you can do to support impulse buying would be good for them," Tristano said.

And electronic means of communicating brings the merchant into the world of the user, which is especially important when working with a younger clientele.

The CIO of a major restaurant chain wanted to see what would happen if he offered free wireless access to all customers. The reaction was overwhelming. To read what happened, click here.

"There's a sense in technology that people in general are more oriented to using PDAs and instant messaging. The younger demographic just tends to adopt it much faster," Tristano said. Cold Stone's "typical customer does tend to be younger."

Tristano was especially optimistic about what some of these chains will do with CRM programs.

"They could create a direct marketing program where they know that Thursday at 8 o'clock, this person comes in," he said.

"At 4:30 one day, they could send a message to the person's PDA, saying they have a different special night the person could go to. It's all about trying to drive additional occasions."

The personal knowledge of customers' preferences is also something that Tristano argues would be powerful with the ice cream buyer.

"It can put them in a position where they know what someone ordered on their last five visits and when the person orders, the salesperson can ask if they'd like the usual or if they'd like to try something different," he said. "This would have great recognition with the customer."

Cold Stone's Bell agreed.

"Having a database of our customers that we own, having the ability to touch them directly with all kinds of communication" is interesting, she said. "Our customers have asked for more communications electronically. We have looked at electronics and how we touch our customers. If it's PDA, if it's cell phone, we'll be on the forefront."

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She added, though, that the cost-controls and streamlined operations through 1,200 franchisees means that simplicity must play a crucial role.

"We do not have 1,200 company-owned stores, so any kind of training, any kind of consistent platform is a challenge," Bell said.

"Our systems need to be improved to provide better tools and better access to sales data, inventory and labor," Bell said, adding that this must be done with tweaked software. "We have no intention of changing out the hardware in the existing stores."

How to strike the balance between corporate mandates and local control? Carefully.

Bell cites the gift card program as an example of where the company needed to make it mandatory, which is imposing some IT purchases on its franchisees.

It's recommending, for example, that franchisees use Verifone's Omni 3750 POS units.

"It is a required program with Cold Stone. Making it happen in a way that makes sense for our franchisees timing-wise and cost-wise is the balance and the challenge that we always have," Bell said.

An initial concern was whether employees having to key in all of that additional information would slow down service, but when the chain did some store testing, "It really didn't slow things down. If anything was slowed, it was very minute," Bell said. "And it's great information so that we know our customers better."

Next Page:The challenges of ice cream e-commerce.