A few weeks ago I was in the Anthropologie store in SoHo looking for specific dress.  They didn’t have it in my color/size so I asked the salesperson if she could see if another store had it in stock.  She said that they could order it and ship it to me for free right from the store and save me the trip.  Sweet!

Then she directed me to wait in a very long, holiday-time-in-New York City-sized line.

Twenty minutes later I finally reached the cash wrap.  To my surprise, the cashier pulled out an iPhone from her pocket, scanned the barcode of the sample dress with it, scrolled to the right size and color I was looking for, swiped my credit card with an attachment on the phone, and I was on my merry way.  Sweet?

Not so much. Why even bother with the iPhone and all of its wonderful functionality if I still had to wait in line for 20 minutes?  Isn’t the whole point of a mobile device its mobility? I couldn’t believe how much of my time they wasted when they just didn’t have to.

It’s like someone at Anthropologie said, “Hey, iPhones are cool!  Let’s get them so we can order stuff for customers direct from the store so they don’t leave without paying for something.  The end.”  There seemed to be no consideration of the iPhone’s real value to the customer experience.  To me, they could have used a catalogue and rotary phone and it would not have made a difference in my experience.  The cashier had the power in her hands!  Unfortunately, the salesperson on the floor was the one who should have had it. (Or hell, I could have had it!)

We see this all the time these days.  Companies buying the hot, new technology and using it in the same cold, stale way they’ve always done things.  In this case, it’s not only a waste of money, it’s damaging to the customer experience.  As companies start implementing technology that’s familiar to consumers, missteps like this become more obvious and frustrating and could actually damage the brand.

Put it this way, if there was no iPhone and they had to use an inventory management system I knew nothing about, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post. But I have an iPhone and I know why it’s awesome– instant gratification.  And so here I am venting about Anthropologie making me wait in line for 20 minutes despite having an instant gratification device right there in her heather grey, merino wool pocket.

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