By plugging in these terminals to its remote data center, the company allows customers to inquire about a book's availability and order as if they were visiting the Web site, complete with free shipping. It's been a rocket ship to the moon in terms of people being very satisfied. The kiosks are NCD ThinStar terminals that host an in-house Web app that runs over a Windows CE thin client. If the title exists in-store, customers will be directed to the shelves. The POS database is updated in real time at the store, so if the last copy from the shelves was sold three minutes before, the kiosk order process kicks in.
Customers can pay by credit card online or in cash at the sales counter.
Confirming the strategy's success is nearly impossible, since Chapters Online would not share meaningful performance metrics. While Chapters Online would not release these details, it's still fairly easy to see how such an implementation makes sense in this industry, and others as well. For starters, special orders via the kiosks are money in the bank for the retailer at the time of order. Historically, customers would pay for a special order if and when they returned to the store to pick up the book. Another benefit is cycle times have been reduced exponentially.