At nearly every pub or drinks related event we attend, two things constantly come up as something publicans need to be more aware of and provide better service for… craft beer, and wifi. Craft beer has been making great inroads, with most pubs offering at least some in bottles. Wifi, however, has been left behind.
It’s more and more common for people to expect a better quality of wifi, especially in places where people want to get a bit of work done or use their phones on a speedy connection. At bare minimum, the service should not be intrusive. As it stands, a lot of the wifi systems used by pubs are clunky, slow, and require you to set up an account with the service that may or may not remember you on your next visit. It’s been common enough for me to have to turn wifi off in certain pubs, because the 3g signal is better.
There’s a new solution for these problems that is starting to gain traction and it makes it easier for the pub and the customer. It’s called ‘Social wifi’. Basically, to use the wifi in the bar the customer checks into the pub on facebook and they are then given access to the wifi. Simple. The connection is strong, speedy, and doesn’t drop. The next time that person comes into your pub the phone immediately reconnects and the customer doesn’t have to suffer the hassle of battling with something that may or may not work.
Those are the benefits and incentives for the customer to use the wifi, but there are also multiple benefits to the pub.
This new social wifi will drive up your facebook checkins, social reach, and page impressions. Every time someone uses your wifi it is advertised to the customers friends via facebook. You can also create a landing page through facebook once a customer has logged in. You can use this to offer discounts, promote drinks specials or events, or highlight an element of your business to people already in the door.
Social wifi can also give you extremely useful metrics on your customers, both new, and returning. The package will be able to tell how many people walked by your pub with wifi enabled, how many of those people came into your pub, how many of those people logged into the wifi, and how long they stayed for. The package will also be able to tell you how frequently people return to your premises, and what proportion of them are first time visitors. This information could be invaluable in terms of judging what you need to do to keep people in your pub longer. This could be done through facebook offers shown to the customer after checking in to your social wifi.
The wifi is constantly monitored from an office in Dublin city centre. If an error occurs, the support will be move to fix it. There’s no hanging around. You’ll have immediate and local support.
The service complies with legal requirements to identify users and is PCI DSS compliant for point of sale devices.
If you would like to hear more about the service, contact John at john@itguys.ie
