SensFloor? could have changed lives in 2020.. perhaps it still can

2020, What a year its been.

With some of the UAE in lockdown, it has felt as though the whole world has slowed down, and April has become the longest month we have ever experienced. While our health heroes and essential workers do their best to keep the world moving. The rest of us have been forced to find a new way to get through the usual working week.

2020 has been a radical change in everyone's lives, whether business is booming or failing, whether you usually love alone time or whether you despise the idea of being alone. We are all stuck in the middle of a pandemic. Life has changed, for each and every single one of us.

The sad reality is that we have no idea when things will return to normal

What would normal even look like? Would we still be interested in riding the overcrowded metro to work every day? Would we still go to work every day? would we still want to browse aimlessly through malls, stores and retail centres?

Would we still have meetings? Would we even want to shake one another hands during an introduction? What about events, Trade Shows, Malls and grocery shopping?

Would we rather just continue to shop online and meet online? Comparing the prices through thousands of companies and spreading that revenue throughout multiple stores rather than the usual store, the one we were loyal to in the past?

We can't go back.

We can only move forward.

Currently, in Dubai, we are only able to apply for a move permit once every three days for the essential items such as going to the grocery store, then once the permit is approved you have to slap on your rubber gloves, put on your mask and drive to the store. In most stores, they check your temperature before entering and security will make sure you sanitize your gloves. They control how many customers are allowed in a store at once and they control your queueing system outside the store. Of course, you as a business owner, have to front the additional costs that come with hiring security and ensuring your staff are trained to handle the hygiene rules and requirements that come alongside this pandemic.

Yet even after all these precautions some people still struggle to understand the concept of social distancing. A customer could have their back turned while selecting an item off the shelf and someone could brush past them and lead you to wonder, are they oblivious or did they just forget the risks?

This leads to your potential customers being too wary of coming to the store. They are too worried about health concerns and they choose to order online from competitors who have already set up and established online stores. How can you as a business owner ease the minds of your potential customers, ensuring them that you and your staff are following all the necessary precautions? Would you have to hire more staff to police the customers? Wouldn't this just add to costs and ruin your bottom line, especially when your customer flow and revenue have reduced dramatically?

What could SensFloors impact have been on the COVID-19 situation, had it been installed prior to the outbreak

What if there was a way to ensure people were reminded of regulations such as social distancing and reminded in a way that was more prominent than a sticker on the floor of the store and less costly than hiring additional staff to manage your customer flow.

What if I told you there is a smart floor that can do this?

If you installed SensFloor? Activity in either Malls, retail stores or at trade shows there would be a multitude of benefits

SensFloor? Activity - Interactive Displays, during COVID-19

If SensFloor had been installed prior to the COVID-19 outbreak your store could have taken social distancing a step further than any other store. This could have been done by setting up the sensors to trigger an alert when two shopping carts are too close to one another.

The floor could have also triggered multimedia displays and sounds when people are putting themselves and others at risk of infection.

Usually, this feature would be used for triggering the in-store interactive advertising and displays, as an example if you had specials on bananas running, you could have a digital sign that lights up as a customer walks past it.

Or you could have a mirror display in a change room which would display a customer wearing a clothing item from your store.

SensFloor? Activity - Social Distancing, during COVID-19

As a store owner, you could be sitting comfortably in your home office while adhering to the self-isolation requirements and you would be able to access the live Sensfloor feed and have a full overview of what is currently happening within your store.

You would know how many customers are currently in the store, where they are and know whether they are adhering to social distancing rules or not.

I can almost hear you thinking, I can do exactly that by accessing a camera feed, and yeah, sure, you can... But would a camera be able to give you that overview of the store as well as a complete breakdown of your customer count per region of your store? A quick glance at the monitor is all you need to capture the situation in your store.

SensFloor? Activity - Visitor count, during COVID-19

Not only would you be able to have an accurate visitor count in your store, detailed to the point that it informs you which area of your store your customer decides to walk to first, second or third, whether they went over to the dairy or fresh produce isle or even whether they noticed your new piece of marketing material

You would also be able to get an even deeper analysis into the store which would inform you which specific regions of your store are the most congested.

Where your high infection risk zones are, as an example, perhaps your customers tend to collide while searching for fruits and vegetables. You could use this data to either rearrange your store layout to minimise this risk or crowd control by limiting the number of customers allowed in this region at once.

If the queue to the tills become too long, or if a region of your store becomes too densely populated SensFloor? can automatically message your staff and ensure the staff minimise infection risk.

Usually, this feature would be used to analyse the trends in the overall store and specific regions of your store. The information SensFloor? Activity provides would allow you to understand your customers wants and needs, do they enter your store and head right due to the advertisement or product you have on the right side of the store or is that just because humans tend to veer right when navigating an area.

This can be used to determine cash conversion rates per region, establish customer flow and establish any dead zones in your store.

SensFloor? Activity - Duration of stay, during COVID-19

Aside from viewing the customer counts and determining your high-density areas within your store SensFloor? Activity also records the time customers are spending in the store and in each region in the store.

This would be helpful during a pandemic because you would be able to set alerts which are automatically sent to your staff informing them that a customer has been standing in front of the toilet paper for over 5 minutes. Your staff member can then make their way over to the customer and check whether the customer needs help or ask the customer to move along so that other customers can also buy some toilet paper.

Usually, this would be used to inform staff of customers that might be at risk, perhaps a customer has been idle in the change room for over 30 minutes. Perhaps something has gone wrong. It can also be helpful in keeping managers informed, perhaps a staff member has been standing still in a hidden section of the store for an unusually long period of time, SensFloor? Activity would automatically inform the manager to check upon them.

The idle time can also be reviewed to analyse whether the marketing material you have set up is having an impact, you would be able to compare customer idle time in that region before and after the marketing material has been added to the store.

Image how helpful SensFloor? Activity could be for retail managers, sales staff and ministries of health during the crisis of a global pandemic.

Unlike camera systems, SensFloor? is 100% data protection compliant, as no personal data is captured or stored.

Imagine all the above features within a mall setup? Can you think of some of the benefits during a pandemic such as COVID-19? stay tuned for

Image Copywrite and some data sources: https://future-shape.com/en/