Neiman Marcus Will Charge Your Phone While You Shop

Neiman Marcus Installs Phone Chargers

Watching a smartphone battery drain to nothing will, one day, be properly diagnosed as a traumatic experience. For now, though, Neiman Marcus is doing what it can to keep that from happening and from causing consumers to cut their shopping sprees short.

Neiman Marcus and ChargeItSpot announced a partnership on Monday (May 23) that will see the latter’s complimentary smartphone charging stations installed in a selection of store fronts to make the shopping experience less stressful for those afflicted with less-than-robust battery life. ChargeItSpot will provide 37 charging stations — which can power eight devices at once — to 30 store fronts across the country. Phones are locked into drawers and can only be retrieved by using a touchscreen interface.

According to Wanda Gierhart, CMO of Neiman Marcus Group, the partnership with ChargeItSpot is all about doing whatever it takes to give the customers what they want.

“At Neiman Marcus, superior customer service starts with a great overall experience in the store,” Gierhart said in a statement. “The ChargeItSpot kiosks allow our customers to charge their phones securely while they shop. It is very important to us that we work with technology to continue to improve our customers’ experience.”

Nieman Marcus has been experimenting with ChargeItSpot’s complimentary charging stations ever since 2014, when one of the kiosks popped up in its flagship location in New York City. The rationale goes that a shopper with a low smartphone battery is more tempted to wrap up their session, thereby potentially skipping over items they would otherwise buy or not making as large a purchase as they would due to lack of mobile research.