Monitoring store occupancy is always important, but during a pandemic, it can’t be a guessing game. As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to adhere to government social distancing recommendations to maintain a safe environment for your employees and customers.
CountWise provides a solution to get a real-time retail occupancy that’s simple to use for you and your customers. With state-of-the-art technology, our occupancy counters keep track of your store’s occupancy in real time, displaying a Green, Amber, or Red Alert.
How the iSense Traffic Counter Works
CountWise will install iSense traffic counters near the entrances and exits to your store. Once active, iSense will count incoming and departing customers and total store occupancy, updating every five seconds. The data goes to the device you choose, giving you the ability to manage your retail occupancy easily. A color-coded display will show the current occupancy of the store and advise customers when they may enter safely. It’s real-time retail occupancy monitoring to help you stick to social distancing best practices for the health and peace-of-mind of your employees and your customers.How CountWise Real-Time Monitoring Helps Your Business
- Optimize traffic flow throughout your store
- Track your busiest times and avoid over- or under-staffing
- Take the guesswork out of maintaining proper social distancing
- Refine your store’s layout to minimize crowding
- Protect the health and safety of your employees
- Minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19 to your customers
Key Retail Occupancy Monitoring Features
- Automated counting of customers as they arrive and depart your stores
- Real-time reporting of total store occupancy for store managers
- Color-coded entry monitor for customers
- Customized reporting
- Retail data analytics and historical data
Technical Specifications
- iSense data collector for each store entrance and exit
- POE injector for each iSense
- 6-port unmanaged network switch
- iPad or Tablet (optional) to view store occupancy in real time
- 3/4G router (if CountWise can’t be on the corporate network)
The Occupancy Management Solution You Need
CountWise is the real-time retail occupancy monitoring system you need
to keep your store open safely.
Benefits of Real-Time Occupancy Monitoring
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way people shop and how retailers run their stores around the world. With new social distancing policies in place, store owners and managers must do everything they can to keep their employees and customers safe.
At CountWise we’ve developed a real-time occupancy monitoring solution to help. One of the most common questions we’re hearing from our clients is this:
What are the benefits of real-time occupancy monitoring?
The good news is that there are benefits you can reap now as well as some that will continue even when it is safe to relax social distancing guidelines. Here are 8 benefits of real-time occupancy monitoring that you should know.
Compliance with Government Occupancy Regulations
The biggest benefit of real-time occupancy monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic is that it helps you comply with government regulations about store occupancy. Many countries and states are ordering retailers to limit the number of customers in their stores to make social distancing possible.
While many retailers use floor markers and signs to encourage social distancing, it is nearly impossible for customers and employees to maintain the proper distance when stores are overcrowded. Our real-time occupancy monitors use easy-to-understand, color-coded displays to help you and your customers stay in compliance with new regulations.
Limit the Spread of Infection
The reason that social distancing guidelines have become the norm is that they are the best way infectious disease experts know to slow the spread of COVID-19 and flatten the curve. Without these measures, hospitals might be overwhelmed with new cases.
CountWise’s real-time occupancy monitoring protects your employees and your customers by limiting the chances that they’ll be forced to stand too close to someone who might be infected. It’s the best way to ensure that your store does not become overcrowded and put everyone inside at risk.
Prioritize Employee Safety
When your employees are sick and unable to work, it’s not good for your business. It means you either need to find someone to fill in or operate with fewer staff members than you need to provide optimal service to your customers. In other words, employee safety must be a priority.
With real-time occupancy monitoring, you decrease the likelihood that your employees will become infected with COVID-19 and be unable to work. The better job you do of helping your employees stay healthy and safe, the easier it will be to keep your store open and profitable.
Refine Employee Scheduling
Every retail store manager knows that it can be challenging to schedule employees appropriately to ensure that you have enough staff working to handle customer demands. One of the benefits of real-time occupancy monitoring is that it can help you to determine the best schedule to maximize your employees’ productivity.
In fact, with real-time occupancy monitoring, you can adjust your schedule to meet your needs during the pandemic, and then re-adjust it when things return to normal. It’s one of the best ways to get an accurate picture of your staffing needs.
Improve Customer Service
In the world of retail sales, customer service is what creates brand loyalty. If you want your customers to return to your store repeatedly, you must provide the highest possible level of customer service.
With CountWise’s real-time occupancy monitoring, you can track customer behavior and use the data you collect to improve customer service. That might mean adapting the layout of your store to improve traffic flow or even changing your hours. The more information you have about your customers’ behavior inside your store, the easier it will be to give them the service they deserve.
Track Advertising Campaigns
For brick-and-mortar retailers, it can be difficult to track the efficacy of marketing and ad campaigns. Even if you see an increase in clicks from a digital campaign, it may not be clear how those clicks translate into in-store traffic and purchases.
Real-time occupancy monitoring can make it easy to track how many customers come to your store after you start a new campaign. While it’s not the only tool you can use to measure the ROI of your ad campaigns, it does provide some valuable insights into your store’s traffic and occupancy before and after a campaign.
Minimize Overhead Expenses
Every hour your store is open costs you money. In addition to your regular rent, open store hours mean paying for employee wages and increased utility usage, among other things. If you keep your store open at times when customer traffic is low, you may be wasting money.
With real-time store occupancy tracking from CountWise, you can review both real-time and historical occupancy data. You can then use the data you collect to determine the most profitable times for your store to be open. You may learn that opening your store later (or earlier) helps to increase your sales.
Maximize Sales
Your store’s sales numbers make the difference between being profitable or ending up in the red. If your sales are on the decline and you don’t have an accurate picture of what’s happening with customer traffic and occupancy, you may find it difficult to improve the situation and increase your sales.
Real-time retail occupancy monitoring gives you the tools you need to fine-tune every element of your store that plays a role in your sales. When you have a clear view of when customers are shopping, what their experience is like, and how occupancy impacts your sales, then you can adjust your operations as needed. In other words, real-time occupancy monitoring can fill in the blanks and help you increase your sales and profits.
As retailers around the world struggle to adapt to new governmental regulations regarding occupancy and social distancing, it’s important to understand which tools and information will help you maintain your agility. CountWise’s real-time retail occupancy monitoring puts the information you need at your fingertips, so you can run your store the way you need to now, and when things return to normal.
Are you ready to try real-time occupancy monitoring now?