Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

J.C. Penney customers are twice as likely to say they are highly satisfied with their in-store shopping experience if they are working with store employees who are accessing the company’s Web site while standing next to them. That according to an Internet Retailer story quoting Kevin Gebhardt, the chain’s director of multi-channel coordination and implementation.

It’s been almost two years since the chain connected all 35,000 of its point-of-sale systems to the Web, giving associates in its nearly 1,100 stores access to the retailer’s e-commerce site, JCP.com, the story said. “J.C. Penney also has tested placing Web-enabled kiosks in stores so that customers can access JCP.com on their own, but decided against deploying them,” Gebhardt said. He added that “the retailer is focusing on helping employees provide better service rather than on self-service technologies, with the exception of kiosks that customers use for accessing online gift registries.”