Starbucks is one of the smarter businesses when it comes to integrating mobile technology, but the new CTO wants to make the experience even more simple, connected, and personalized.
At the annual shareholder event in Seattle, CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger laid the vision to shareholders of a future where customers have personalized menus, automatic orders, and autonomous deals depending on volume and sales data.
“Imagine you’re on a road trip, driving across the country, and you pull into a Starbucks drive-through that you’ve never been to before,” she said, according to GeekWire. “We detect you’re a loyal customer and you buy about the same thing every day, at about the same time. So as you pull up to the order screen, we show you your order, and the barista welcomes you by name.”
She followed by saying that this isn’t a crazy pipe-dream, but a goal Starbucks is working towards in the next few years.
Starbucks serves IoT hot with sprinkle of Silicon Valley
Flickinger is a Silicon Valley veteran, working at VeriSign, McAfee, and Adobe Systems, so its not surprising she is fixated on all sorts of technology trends and how they can be applied to Starbucks. She was named the first CTO in late 2015, affirming the coffeehouse chain’s commitment to the integration of technology.
Two months after Flickinger was appointed, Starbucks began a test delivery service with Postmates. It also partnered with Lyft for the My Starbucks Rewards Program.
Starbucks already uses some innovative systems in its store, like internet-connected ovens and coffee machines that receive automatic orders to change the temperature, based on new products and customer feedback. That reduces the human error, by ensuring that there is a standard across all stores.
In the future, the system might be able to personalize the heat, texture, and even the design of a product to meet the customer’s demands, according to Flickinger. The huge amount of data acquired by Starbucks on its customers will help tremendously in this personalized pursuit, with 90 million transactions per week from customers.
Flickinger didn’t give a precise roadmap for these new systems, but as we move into a more connected age, we suspect Starbucks will continue adopt these technologies before other stores.
