Last week I attended Retail Connections in Dallas. The morning was devoted to speakers sharing their views (mine on the future of the store), but the afternoon was devoted to conversation and an exchange of ideas. And a strong exchange it was.

During that session, one executive shared a perspective on in-store technology that caught my attention. I’m paraphrasing slightly, but what he said was, “I don’t want to invest in in-store technology in order to make my store associates more efficient or more knowledgeable. I want to use technology to make it possible to deliver the same experience that I provide to my top 1% of customers – to ALL of my customers. “

This is the complete exact opposite of the way I see most retailers think about it. Most of the time when retailers talk about in-store technology, they’re talking about “parity ” or “an arms race with customers “. They’re talking about helping their store associates keep up with the information that customers already have, either because they did their research online before coming to the store, or because they’re carrying easy access to that information in their pockets.

That approach to in-store technology will always lose. Store employees, even armed with more information than shoppers can gather for themselves (inventory coming in on the next truck, for example), will still find themselves racing to catch up to their customers’ interests. The product or brand information that is valuable to one customer will be meaningless to the next, and even a lifetime as a sales associate probably won’t be enough to learn them all. And we all know how many employees actually make it through a “lifetime ” of being a sales associate in a retail chain anyway.

But this concept of “the 1% customer service experience – available to all “? That’s different. There’s a lot implied in that statement. That the sales associate has a legitimate (as in, encouraged by the customer), long-term relationship with the customer. That the retailer is willing to invest in that relationship in order to create delight and ultimately, loyalty. And that the customer is willing to have that kind of relationship (in other words, that the customer finds value in the relationship that he or she can’t get from another retailer).

But it raises an even more interesting question: what is your company’s 1% customer experience? Do you have one? Do you know your 1% customers? I realize that’s something of a provocative term, given how it was used recently in American politics (as in the top 1% wealthiest Americans). But the truth is, every retailer has a group of extremely loyal and extremely valuable customers. And for some retailers, that group of customers is loved and valued and treated very well. Theoretically, technology isn’t just about transparency (the concern of the parity-seekers). It’s about creating scale – a way to deliver more value to a greater number of people.

In-store technology today has many of the same challenges as the first time retailers tried to put handhelds or kiosks into stores – training, ROI, etc. In the parity model, that ROI will be hard to find. In the 1% model, though, things could be very different.