AI analytics allows you to strengthen several aspects of the business at once — to increase security (especially in a pandemic), improve property management (regulate the number of employees at locations, quickly respond to troubleshooting, cleaning, etc.), improve customer experience and increase profits (optimization of routes, location shops, etc.).
Foot traffic AI analytics is significant for public place owners, operators and managers. It helps to collect data about visitor routes around the facility or public place, create heatmaps, control overcrowding, improve customer experience and many more. It’s helpful for any kind of public place whether it’s a shopping mall, airport, or train station. In this article, I will talk about the principles of work and the benefits of tracking customers or visitors and AI analytics of their routes (through the building), room occupancy, etc.
Security
First of all, AI analytics helps to enhance security by highlighting the most crowded areas. Based on AI analytics data, you can increase the number of security guards in crowded places or pay extra attention while monitoring cameras there. You can supervise the venue occupancy by maintaining a social distancing policy and controlling the number of visitors inside your venue.
Overcrowding can be controlled by directing people to other routes via internal navigation. You can also inform people about overcrowding to help them avoid it and keep themselves safe in covid 19 reality. You can provide extra cleanings/disinfections in crowded places.
Among other things, you can respond to security threats. If cameras are installed in the shopping centre, you can instantly identify persons from the “black list” and alert security. You will be able to minimize the financial and reputational damage from theft and inappropriate behaviour.
Facility management
Based on AI analytics, you can optimize the number of service personnel in a facility, increase cleaning and other staff in crowded areas and rush hours and minimize the number of staff at off-peak hours. Based on heatmaps you can see the most crowded (popular) places in the facility and set up a preventive maintenance place.
In accordance with the precautionary measures during Covid-19 (additional disinfection, etc.), the costs only increase, but the budgets don’t, so it is important to look for how to optimize these costs. The time has come for facility management in the era of digitalization. It makes it much easier to manage facilities. Especially if we are talking about large facilities such as shopping malls, logistics centres or hypermarkets. Check our latest post about reducing facility operational costs via metaverse and other technologies.
Customer experience
With the help of analytics, you can get to know the target audience in more detail, record trends and use them in further work. You can also get information about the number of sales and the ratio of visitors/buyers for all stores and find out what factors most affect the conversion.
Higher security, in-time cleaning and maintenance already improve customer satisfaction. In addition to this, you can analyse and improve customer journeys based on foot traffic AI analytics. You can experiment with floor layout to select (based on analytics) the best option, ensuring greater customer experiencе. Changes to the floor layout can include changing the location of shops, cafes inside the food courts, kiosks, etc.
Revenue
AI analytics is not only about customer experience, process optimization and security. It’s about generating higher revenue. A well-designed customer journey enables you to boost sales. The right floor layout ensures that visitors get what they need where they want it and helps to generate sales as well. The traditional approach is not enough to stimulate purchases and can’t improve customer experience. In one of our articles, we already explored top technologies that are boosting revenue growth for shopping malls.
Summing up
The knowledge of the customer, of their needs and preferences, is a key to success. However, generic surveys and indeed just a guess can’t help you to understand your customer. AI analytics can. Foot traffic data give a true picture of visitor behaviour. With the help of AI analytics, you can check traffic data, predict workload during the season, quickly respond to business challenges and finally evaluate the effectiveness of management decisions.