Best Buy iPad customer-qualification app
Zach CardozaTulare, CA
An HTML5 plus PHP iPad app I built at Best Buy to replace the paper customer-qualification packets used by Computer, Geek Squad, Car Audio, Home Theater, and Photo. The app ran on a little server in the store's back-office closet, and the iPads pulled it down by IP. When a sales associate finished a qualification, the app printed the answers back onto the existing paper forms so nothing downstream in the operations chain had to change.
- Role
- Interactive Technology Support
- Employer
- Best Buy
- Dates
- 2010 - 2012
- Tech
- HTML5
- PHP
- iPad
Customer-qualification packets at Best Buy were a stack of paper forms a sales associate walked through with each customer (what computer do you need, what do you use it for, what's your budget, will you need anti-virus or accessories). Each department had its own packet. Most associates skipped fields because the forms were long and the line behind the customer was longer.
The iPad app reproduced the qualification flows on screen with conditional logic, so an associate only saw the questions that mattered for the situation. The local server in the store's back-office ran the app and stored the data; the iPad pulled it by IP. At the end of the flow, the system printed the completed values back onto the existing paper forms so the rest of the operations chain (inventory pulls, invoicing, install scheduling) did not need to change.
My home store rolled it out, and a handful of other stores adopted it through ad-hoc personal distribution. Best Buy corporate did not pick up the original, but released a larger official equivalent several years later. The work taught me how much of "shipping software" is making sure the broader system around it does not have to change at the same time.