WiFi Analytics: Improve Customer Experience, Improve Sales

In a recent presentation, I made the following claim, “I know how to prevent customers from buying online.”

The answer, “Make the customer experience fabulous!” 

Nothing is more important than the customer experience. We already know, according to an Oracle consumer survey, that people will pay 4-5% more for a high-quality experience. 

So how do we make the customer experience fabulous? 

Three things:

1.    Make buying from us easy: This includes finding the product in our store, getting from the shelf to checkout, and then – when necessary – the return of a product.

2.    Get to know the customer: We need to have as close to a one-on-one relationship as our tools and the customer will allow us to have.

3.    Engage our employees: If we do 1 and 2 to perfection but our employees are not engaged in the program and are not seeking the same goal, then the whole thing collapses.

As a managed services provider, Hughes can help you meet all three with solutions ranging from Managed SD-WAN to transform your organization's network backbone to enterprise WiFi and every point in between.

Here, however, I want to focus on how WiFi analytics (sometimes called Location analytics) can help. Specifically, let’s focus on how it helps achieve step No. 2 above: Getting to know the customer.

As background, WiFi analytics works by tracking customers’ mobile phones as they interact with your enterprise Wi-Fi network in store.  Many behaviors can be tracked even if the customer doesn’t actively use the network. You can discretely monitor dwell times, count footfalls by the hour, and see Web browsing habits. With these incredibly powerful insights you can make smarter marketing decisions and boost revenue.

For example, knowing that the customer is in a specific store allows you to provide product suggestions through your brand application. You now have the knowledge and ability to suggest items that are in stock, items that are on clearance or any other item that you might have reason to believe he or she should consider. 

Your store's app can be far more helpful in searching and purchasing items if there is accurate information about which store the customer is visiting.

Knowing the traffic pattern that this customer follows in our store helps us, too.

Upselling and cross-selling can be more accurate based on our knowledge of their flow through a store. Aggregating customer traffic patterns using WiFi analytics (sometimes called heat mapping) can also help us improve the layout and product positioning within our stores. We can ask ourselves:

• When are they visiting our stores (time, day, week or month)?
• Where do they go when they are in our store?
• Do they only go to the areas of our store where they buy what they have always bought or do they wander about the store at all? 
• Do they look at other items in our store before buying what they have been buying?

In addition to what they have bought from us, we need to understand what else they might buy.

In order to do this, we need to accumulate data on their habits. 

WiFi analytics is not only about making the customer experience fabulous, it is also about understanding how you can get a greater share of your customer’s wallet.

Watch where they walk and what they buy. If their pattern is not direct to the purchase item every time, that means they are shopping around and there is a chance for you to get an upsell, cross-sell or even a new category from them. 

Remember, existing customers are far easier to sell to because you already have a trusted relationship.

With information about their patterns and paths in our store, we can move items, refocus messaging and create more chances to sell.

Taken in aggregate and with the right expertise, WiFi analytics improves customer experience. 

For even greater insights, deploy a WiFi analytics solution like the HughesON Wifi Location Analytics and then work with an organization like HighStreet Collective, who will help you find relevant patterns and trends.

And just like HighStreet provides expertise to make your efforts successful, an experienced managed services provider can help you get the technology set up right and be ready to capture the data you need. 

 

The Right Connection Impacts Retail

Don't miss the opportunity to meet with Hughes and HighStreet, among other industry leaders, at NRF 2019 where retailers can learn firsthand about the direct benefits of WiFi Analytics. 

Learn More: WiFi analytics transforms store operations, too