Since the beginning of commerce products have been sold in a showroom floor then customers take delivery of their purchase at a designated product pickup area or facility.  Historically this has been especially true for big ticket items.  Following the rise of the online shopper “Big Box” stores are trying to gain back market share from the “Online Stores” by offering online sales with “Brick and Mortar” delivery.  Ever since the very first sales floor purchase that required delivery of a product by an individual that did not make the sale a problem of identifying valid sales has existed.  Add in delayed shipping and receiving of out of stock items the logistics are a daunting and expensive proposition.  Years ago many retailers have invested in electronic inventory systems with paper receipts and costly maintenance laden point of sale kiosks to automate the delivery process.  All of these processes are based on the customer remembering a paper receipt with unique identifier as well as a valid ID and credit card used to make the purchase.

So, what do all of these staggering retail business logistics have to do with cross channel communications?  Well, in walks a customer through the product pickup doors drawing their smart phone from holster scanning a QR Code pasted on the wall and hits enter.  All the information available on the smart phone such as cell number, purchase confirmation number, as well as the GPS coordinates if need be trigger a mobile integration to an inventory system integrated skills based ACD system notifying the appropriate warehouse personnel that the customer awaiting his purchase.  The product is picked and the simple possession of the smart phone should be adequate personal identification but a driver’s license plus a stylist signature may complete delivery.  The customer walks out of the pickup department unusually pleased.  All of this process completed using a point of sale kiosk that the consumer pays for.

Automated product pickup through cross channel interactions is on channel.