Payment Service Propagating Customer Preferences Across Merchants

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Solution Overview

Problem

Merchants face challenges in customizing customer experiences across different locations, as they lack information about customers' preferences when they visit different merchants, leading to inconsistent service.

Innovation Solution

A payment service that collects and propagates customers' item preferences across merchants, associating these preferences with user profiles and intelligently sharing them with relevant merchants to enhance customer experiences.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If merchants collect and store customer preference information locally, then customer experience customization is improved, but information availability across different merchants deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecustomer experience customizationVSAvoidpreference information availability

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSLoss of information

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces a payment service as an intermediary system that collects, stores, and manages customer preference information centrally. This intermediary enables information sharing across multiple merchants without requiring each merchant to maintain their own separate preference databases, thus resolving the contradiction between localized customization and broad information availability

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The payment service performs multiple functions: it authorizes payment instruments for transactions and simultaneously collects, stores, and propagates customer preference information. This multi-functional approach allows the same system to handle both financial transactions and preference management, enabling information availability across different merchants while maintaining customization capability

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

2Adaptability or versatility

If merchants manually track customer preferences, then service personalization is improved, but operational complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveservice personalizationVSAvoidoperational complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system automatically collects customer preference information during transactions without requiring manual tracking by merchant staff. The payment service autonomously captures preference data, stores it in customer profiles, and makes it available to merchants, eliminating the need for manual preference management while maintaining service personalization

Inventive Principle:

Principle #25Self-service

Solution Approach 2:

The system establishes a feedback loop where customer preferences are continuously collected during transactions, stored, and then used to personalize future service experiences. This automated feedback mechanism replaces complex manual tracking with a streamlined process that continuously improves service personalization

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS10430849B1Propagation of customer preferences

Publication Date: 2019.10.01 BLOCK INC

AI summary

This disclosure describes, in part, techniques for collecting item preferences of users at a centralized location and propagating these item preferences to users and merchants in an intelligent manner. In some instances, the centralized location is a payment service that functions to both authorize payment instruments of users for costs of transactions conducted at the merchant, and collect and propagate the item preferences to the merchants and the users.