For example, the process Circuit City currently uses to ensure that customers who reserve items online for in-store pickup actually get those items evolved over time. "There were some issues at first," says Ken Pacunas, technology manager at the Circuit City store in Natick, Mass. "The biggest one was that there was no time limit to how long an employee could take to pick a product."

If an employee waited too long to get a pack of batteries off the shelf and put them in a back room with the customer’s name on it, another customer might buy it before the first customer arrived. Result: one irate customer.

To prevent that scenario, Circuit City instituted a 15-minute rule. When an order for an in-store pickup comes in to the store from CircuitCity.com, a printer connected to the POS system issues a pick ticket with the product ID and the customer’s name. When this happens, a timer starts and store associates have 15 minutes to pick the item, acknowledge that they’ve done so in the POS system and put it on a shelf designated for in-store pickup. If the POS system doesn’t recognize the completion of the task within 15 minutes of the pick ticket being generated, a beeping alarm will sound and a message will appear at the bottom of every POS terminal in the store reminding clerks that a pickup order needs to be taken off the shelf. If the POS system does not recognize the completion of the task within 30 minutes, an electronic alert is sent to the customer support center to call a manager and have him immediately set the product aside for the customer.

Pacunas says that people buy online and pick up items in his Natick store every day and that 5 percent of his store’s business comes from individuals who shop online and arrange to pick up their merchandise in the store. "It’s the convenience factor," he says. "Most people pick their items up the same day that they order them online. They want that instant satisfaction."

Sears The Importance of Being Real-Time

"The reason we developed the ability to buy online and pick up in store was customer feedback," says Dennis Honan, vice president of Sears Customer Direct. "We looked at online shopping-cart abandonment, and we asked customers, Why aren’t you buying this product? Many customers said they were just interested in seeing what the cost was and that they planned to go to the store and buy it."