What happens when a customer is sitting in the parking lot, and no one inside knows they’ve arrived?
It’s a Saturday afternoon. A customer pulls into a curbside spot, taps “I’m here” in the app, and waits. Inside, the order is sitting on a shelf near the front, ready to go. The problem is that nobody working the floor knows the customer has arrived, because the notification that was supposed to reach a phone, a radio, anything, never made it to a real person in real time.
Five minutes pass. Then ten. The customer who chose curbside specifically to save time is now the one losing it.
THE CHALLENGE
Curbside pickup tends to break down in one of two ways, and most retailers fall into one of them.
Some stores don’t have a dedicated curbside system at all. Customers call the store, employees try to flag down whoever’s nearby, and the process depends entirely on someone happening to be available to answer the phone and walk an order out. It works, but it’s slow and inconsistent, especially during a rush.
Other stores have a curbside system in place, an app, a website integration, but the notification side is weak. An alert might land in an inbox or a dashboard nobody’s watching, or it requires an employee to be stationed at a screen instead of moving around the store doing their actual job. The system technically works. The notification just doesn’t reach a person fast enough to matter.
Either way, the result is the same for the customer: they did everything right, and they’re still waiting.
BUILT FOR THE FLOOR
The approach here starts with making sure a curbside arrival reaches an actual person, on whatever device they’re already using, the moment it happens.
For stores without an existing curbside system, The ONE Platform® can support a two-way callbox in the pickup area, so the customer can identify themselves and a staff member can radio back to confirm the order is on its way. No new app, no waiting on hold.
For stores that already have a curbside system in place, The ONE Platform® connects directly into that existing setup, so an arrival notification goes out over radio, SMS, email, or a colored light, whichever combination actually reaches staff while they’re working the floor instead of sitting at a screen.
Either way, the goal is the same: the moment a customer arrives, someone walking the floor knows immediately.
THE IMPACT
The most immediate change is wait time. A notification that reaches a radio or a phone in someone’s pocket gets a faster response than one sitting in an inbox or on a screen nobody’s watching. That difference is exactly what curbside customers are paying for with their time, not their money.
There’s a staffing benefit too. Employees don’t have to be stationed near a monitor just to catch curbside notifications. They can be anywhere on the floor and still get the alert the moment it matters, which means curbside coverage stops competing with everything else they’re responsible for.
For store leadership, whether you have a weak system or simply no system at all, The ONE Platform® allows you to deliver: a curbside experience that actually delivers on the convenience it promises, instead of quietly undercutting it.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR OPERATION
Curbside pickup succeeds or fails on one thing: how fast the person inside the store finds out the customer outside has arrived. Retailers have largely solved the ordering and payment side of curbside. The notification side, getting that arrival to a real person in real time, is where the experience still breaks down for a lot of stores.
For any retailer running curbside with a notification system that depends on someone watching a screen, or with no notification system at all, this is worth a serious look, not because curbside itself is failing, but because the convenience customers were promised depends entirely on what happens in that gap between arrival and notice.
Interested in how The ONE Platform® approaches curbside pickup notifications in retail? Let’s talk.