ZD Net Asia: Remember the days before mobile phones made their way into our pockets, when beeping pagers were the toast of the town?
During blogger Eileen Yu’s Vegas trip last week, she chanced upon a food outlet that used radio paging technology in its ordering system.
Rather than make its customers stand around the store waiting aimlessly for their numbers to be called when their food is ready, the food outlet hands out pagers shaped like drink coasters to a customer after he places his order.
With the coaster pager in hand, the customer is then free to move around and browse through other outlets at the food court, or return to his table to wait comfortably whilst his order is being prepared. When it’s ready for pickup, the coaster pager will light up and vibrate to alert the customer to return to the store and collect his food.
It was a really cool way to reuse an old piece of technology, and apply it in a new real-world environment to provide better customer service. We really don’t get to see much of that kind of innovation anymore these days.
Teaching old tech new tricks [ZD Net Asia]
Coaster Pagers
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This technology has been used this way for years – restaurants in the Mall of America use it, the Olive Garden chain uses it, along with many other high traffic chains.