The ab|inventio Gazette

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Being out of line is a good thing at the DMV.

Brick-and-mortar retailers and online sellers alike are noticing an increase in abandoned shopping carts and cold feet at checkout lines. For physical shops, this means more work putting things back on the shelves. 

It means more lost sales  for stores at a time when there are already fewer customers because of the recession. For bricks-and-mortar shops already working with fewer staff, it also means more work because orphaned items have to be restocked.

Dislocated Items

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but Burt P. Flickinger III, a retail consultant, estimates that in 25 percent of shoppers’ trips to the store, they’re ditching at least one item. In the recession of the early 1990s, it was 15 to 20 percent. In good times, it’s more like 10 percent.

QLess can reduce abandonment and increase store revenues by letting consumers use the time spent standing at a check-out line looking for something they may have forgotten anywhere in the store, then get paged on their cell phone when their turn to check-out is almost there.

Read more at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/21/business/main5257349.shtml and http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/67942.html?wlc=1256004634 .

Dave Rosenthal, an engineer and MBA by training who has held positions as product manager, program manager, alliance manager, Sr. Consultant, Director of Development and VP Ops at Xerox, Deloitte & Touche and other companies including early stage start-ups, had joined our team to lead administration & finance. Welcome, Dave! 

–Alex

Mesa Community College launched QLess, eliminating lines at advisement, admissions, financial aid, registration and enrollment services. We asked Bill Dehaan, Director of IT for Mesa Community College, if he was happy with QLess or if there was anything we could do to improve his experience. This is what he wrote back:“So far I am ecstatic with the app and even more happy with the support I get”.Thanks, Bill! We love QLess, too. –Alex

The Johnson County DMV is now using QLess Web Services to display the current wait times at both of their DMV locations on their home page.  They’re also using QLess Kiosk to let customers enter the virtual line from home!

–Tim

Susan Masterson, a recruiter with TeamHealth in Knoxville, Tenn., said using social networking sites is a “strategy that anyone in recruiting, whether it be physicians or otherwise, needs to incorporate in their plan. It’s here. It’s here to stay.”http://ow.ly/tZIe . SocialDiligence.com makes this easier for recruiters, finding many profiles in one search and filtering out irrelevant results based on a candidate’s resume.–Alex

I met Aaron Patzer at JuicePitcher last night. Aaron is founder and CEO of the #1 personal finance service in the world, Mint.com, recently sold to Intuit for $170,000,000. He approached me to say he loved what he had heard about QLess, and wanted to set a time to learn more. We took his words seriously coming from a smashingly successful entrepreneur who drove his own company from 0 to 170MM and created a market-dominating company in 3 years. Well, Aaron, we love Mint.com too –in fact I use it every month. If you have not tried it, go to Mint.com today –it’s free, and it’ll tell you exactly how much spare change you have to go QLess today. Then you can use it to track exactly how much money QLess adds to your net worth.

–Alex

QLess was selected today to speak at Geeks Going Global at the Sun Microsystems campus in Silicon Valley next week.

Sign up now at Gettheswineflushot.com .

If you are a flu shot provider, inquire with QLess to get referrals of people in your area who want the flu shot or to manage your lines.