It’s not just food, drink, entertainment and good service that wins over customers. WiFi has become part of ensuring a satisfactory customer experience with 60% of people saying they would be more likely to return to a restaurant if it gave free internet access.
While customers might consider WiFi as an added bonus to their dining or shopping experience, today’s savvy business owner sees it as a way of boosting customer relations and promoting the products or services it provides. The first move should be to ensure that when customers log on to your secure WiFi service with their contact details, they do so via a login page that features your business branding. Once your customers are logged in and you have their contact details, there’s a host of ways you can use that data to engage with them directly:-
- Promotions and sponsorship: customers using your WiFi means having the potential to direct them to various pages to offer them additional products or services and endorse promotions. For example, a hotel can use URL redirects to offer guests room service or promote happy hour at the minibar, stopping guests turning to competitors. You can use the same approach for third-party advertising by directing guests to sponsored pages, making your WiFi a revenue stream.
- Strengthen marketing channels: gaining guests’ email addresses and mobile numbers at the login stage enables you to add these customer details to your direct mail or SMS campaigns to push offers and promotions to. Perhaps your business has an app that you can direct customers to? Using your WiFi to build on marketing channels, or create new ones, can mean further brand exposure and increasing customer loyalty.
- Tailor it: gaining customer details also allows you to ensure that the marketing you push out over your guest engagement systems is tailored to the specific customer. For example, a clothing retailer can ensure that it prioritises sending male customers details of new menswear over any other products. By adding location tracking to your WiFi’s capability, you can also establish customer behaviour and determine what their preferences are and how frequently they visit. This gives you a more informed basis to push the right marketing messages to the right people.
- Feedback: unhappy customers might not have any problem turning to the likes of TripAdvisor to leave disparaging reviews, but it’s often a struggle gaining positive feedback. Directing guests using a URL could be what nudges them into giving you a review. Offering a survey that is integrated with your WiFi management dashboard means you can more easily monitor feedback and create alerts for when satisfaction rates reach a certain point, enabling you to quickly address any areas of your service that may need improvement.
Your WiFi is so much more than another utility. As your customers are highly likely to log on to your WiFi anyway, it’s the perfect platform for two-way communication and to boost marketing activity and upsell. Providing WiFi is about more than improving the customer experience; it’s about adding further dimensions to your business.
