Real-Time Digital Access for Low-Cost Customer Transactions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current marketing tools are inefficient and costly, requiring businesses to spend heavily on acquiring customers, retaining them, and managing customer interactions, with low engagement rates and security concerns, while customers are reluctant to provide personal information and engage with marketing content.
Innovation Solution
A system that provides real-time digital communication using QR codes, SMS texts, NFC tags, and emails to facilitate customer interactions for services like coupons, loyalty programs, social media connections, and appointment booking, enabling personalized and efficient marketing and customer engagement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If businesses use traditional marketing tools (email, mailers, marketing lists) to acquire customers, then they can reach potential customers, but the costs become very expensive and effectiveness is low
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses QR codes as a simplified copy of traditional marketing materials. Instead of expensive printed mailers and marketing lists, businesses can generate and display QR codes that customers scan with their smartphones to access marketing content, loyalty programs, and product information. This digital copy approach dramatically reduces material and distribution costs while maintaining effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical marketing systems (printing, mailing, physical distribution) with digital systems. QR codes, NFC tags, and mobile device interfaces substitute for physical mailers and marketing lists, enabling businesses to reach customers through smartphones and tablets rather than through costly traditional marketing channels.
2Productivity
If businesses send marketing emails to potential customers, then they can communicate with customers, but spam filters block most emails and open rates remain very low
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces QR codes and NFC tags as intermediary elements between the business and the customer. These intermediaries are displayed in physical locations or on websites, and when customers scan them with their smartphones, they are directed to relevant business content. This intermediary approach bypasses email spam filters entirely, as the engagement happens through mobile device scanning rather than email delivery.
3Reliability
If customers are asked to provide personal information during purchase to enable follow-up, then businesses can retain customers, but customers are reluctant to provide information due to hacking concerns and notification overload
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables customers to opt-in to loyalty programs and receive personalized communications by scanning QR codes or NFC tags, rather than being forced to provide information during the purchase process. Customers actively choose to engage with the business by scanning codes, and the system then provides relevant information and offers based on their preferences, making the interaction voluntary and convenient rather than mandatory and intrusive.
4Loss of information
If businesses use traditional marketing materials (printed mailers, flyers) to reach customers, then they can deliver information, but the materials are expensive to produce and distribute, and customers often discard them
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces physical printed marketing materials with digital QR codes and NFC tags. These digital copies can be displayed on screens, printed on minimal media, or embedded in products, and they direct customers to comprehensive online content. This eliminates the need for expensive printing, distribution, and disposal of physical mailers while ensuring information is delivered through the customer's smartphone, which they are already carrying.
Data Source
AI summary
The system may provide an access function to a customer device. The system may receive, from the customer device, a request for the business function via the access function. The system may provide, to the customer device, the business function. The access function may include at least one of a QR code, a link in an SMS text, a link in an email, an NFC tag or a NFC tap that provides a business function for a business. The business function may include issuing a coupon, validating the coupon, enrolling in a loyalty program, issuing points in the loyalty program, providing a review request, setting a reminder, adding to a promotions list, downloading an app, connecting on social media, sending a payment link, booking an appointment, sending a survey, sending a gift account, enrolling in a birthday club and joining a referral program.