5 Ways to Monitor Your Customers and Take Your Business to the Next Level

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Online, shops and merchants can easily track their customers’ buying habits and information, giving them a better understanding not only who their customers are and their interests but what items and pages are clicked on most. For brick and mortar shops though, there are fewer ways to gauge habits and even fewer ways to analyze customers’ behavior in store. Thankfully, however, there has been a recent surge in digital tech and business processes that monitor and analyze brick and mortar shops.

1. Bluetooth & Beacon

To start, some simple digital tech has begun to be used in decoding customers’ behavior throughout a store towards purchasing. These low energy solutions include Bluetooth and beacons. iBeacon technology is an enabling technology for Apple devices to alert websites or apps when someone leaves or approaches a location. For retail shops, the use of beacons can detect the exact location of a customer at any given time. At this point, business owners can push timely messages to customers providing useful information or promoting products. Beacons and iBeacon use Bluetooth wireless technology to locate customers in their stores and around their stores. Understanding your customers’ behavior in your stores can help you better understand what they are looking at first and even most. This kind of technology also gives companies the chance to connect more personally with their clients and customers.

2. People Counting Software

Other new tech includes people counting software. This kind of software can help provide similar insights to Bluetooth and Beacon. However, unlike Bluetooth, though people counting software uses technology like facial recognition and big data analytics. A people counter can keep track of foot traffic and measure physical advertising. It can show businesses what works and how best to use a space. The system can monitor stores at all hours of the day, and isn’t just for retail. Hospitals and banks can use it track patient loads and peak hours.

3. Video

Also paired with Wi-Fi can be data gathered from video. This data gathered from surveillance video cameras and Wi-Fi hotspots can once again give business owners insight into how customers move around a store. Coupled with transaction data and a sales system, this can build a better picture of how well front window advertising can bring customers in. It can also serve to show whether the store layout helps make browsing easy, where shoppers go and even if checkout lines are losing customers. Facial recognition software can even give video analysis a leg up as it can detail gender and age profiles of customers, add on top of this the ability to register shoppers’ reactions and emotions and you can really begin to understand whether or not your customers are disinterested, happy or bored as they move about your store.

4. Data Analysis

Big data has become another big solution for businesses to better monitor and understand their customers. With more access to even more data, companies can really begin to track, monitor, and analyze the behaviors and patterns of their customers and clients. By tracking customer service through big data, companies can tell which contact preferences customers prefer when trying to solve an issue. This way, you can establish the preferred channels of communication by customers and put more workforce in the areas that receive the most traffic.

5. Social Media

Social media is not just the final way to monitor your customers and help take your business to the next level, it is also one of the best ways. People spend more time today on social media than ever before, and knowing which platforms they use most and what they search for can help businesses know where to advertise and how to advertise to better serve their customers and also to understand their needs and demands. Monitoring these platforms can help you focus your efforts on the right platform, perhaps your customers are on Instagram more than Twitter, you wouldn’t want to waste time and resources on Twitter campaigns when you should be focusing on Instagram or Facebook.

Rick Delgado
Freelance Writer
I've been blessed to have a successful career and have recently taken a step back to pursue my passion of writing. I've started doing freelance writing and I love to write about new technologies and how it can help us and our planet. I also occasionally write for tech companies like Dell.

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