Starbucks has a whole crew of people who do nothing but study their customers.  They study the obligatory demographics, as should any business.  They step a little further and study things such as:

• Do customers buy more when there are certain colors near the register
• Do customers tend to shy away from certain products during certain times?

…and so on.

But they also try to get into the customers mind (and mess with it a little bit).

Recently Starbucks started hiring ‘expediters’.  These people are equipped with a cute little headset, and  usually show up when the lines start getting long.  If you happen to walk in during a long-line period, these little smiling gremlins may show up to ‘pre-take’ your order.  You tell the expediter what you’d like to order, and he/she repeats it into the headset.  You assume she is forwarding your order to the barista’s – but you’re wrong.

When you get up to the counter, the clerk will once again take your order.  By then you may be slightly confused, as you’ve already ‘placed’ your order – or so you thought.  The workers behind the counter will get busy building your super mocha latte and off you’ll go ten minutes later.

So what happened?  Why did you pre-order and then order again?

Starbucks, along with many other companies, ready-to-consume food companies in particular, has discovered that by taking your pre-order during a period of longer lines, there is an emotional connection made between customer and store.  The longer line may persuade some to leave, but by taking your pre-order, you are more likely to stand in the long line and complete the transaction.

Stores with an expediter saw an increase in sales and less walk-outs.

I have several clients who have very nice online presence for their retail or service businesses, but they don’t ’sell’ online.  By this I mean they have products listed, but you can’t (and probably won’t) simply purchase a $2400 piece of furniture over their website.  They see this as a possible barrier, and have worked on ways to get those window shoppers converted to warm leads by use of what is similar to Starbucks’ expediter.

On every deep product page, we have placed a rather large button that says something to the tune of ‘Find out More about this Armoire’.  The button, when clicked, opens a brief form right there on the screen (via Litebox) which asks for the users name, phone and email.  It also gives them a small comment box to ask about sizes, price, etc.  Behind the scenes, we dump the product name/ID that they are inquiring about, so we know exactly what they’re after.

We don’t want a potential to find a product, then have to search out a Contact Us page.  There’s a potential for lost leads there, so we need to become the middle-man between product and contact.  We expedite their purchase (or at least turn them from a window shopper to a warm lead).

I also use this for some of my lead generation websites.  I have a website that ranks well for certain types of loans.  If I get those potential customers, and pass them on to a particular loan company, I’ll get a commission off that loan when it converts.  Simply building a page with links that say ‘click here to apply’ doesn’t work well any more, so I need to somehow make a small emotional connection with the visitor.

How do I do that? With a form, right there on the home page (and practically any landing page for that matter). The form is simple.

• Name
• Email
• How much do you want?
• When do you want it?

There’s also a checkbox (already checked) asking if they’d like more offers if this one doesn’t work out. The options for “how much” are set to a nice number (say, $10k), and the “when” options are set to something like “24 hours”. When the visitor clicks the Submit button, I flash a little page with one of those ‘processing’ icons (you know, the little ones going around in circles making you think some big server somewhere is crunching away at your information) and then about 6 seconds later the visitor is taken to my loan affiliate.

I’ve accomplished three things here – I’ve made an emotional connection with the visitor – they think my website is providing them with the best possible loan option. I’ve passed along a warm loan lead to my loan company, and I’ve retained the email for future newsletter use.

The emotional connection is a tough thing to do today.  With so many websites competing for most any niche, you need to make that quick grab for attention before your user hits the Back button. Engage them, make them think you are working for them, and you’ll convert more leads to sales.