All businesses that have face-to-face contact with customers do their best to keep them safe. No business owner wants someone to have an accident or get sick because of something that happened in their shop, clinic, gym, or salon.
As well as enforcing the normal safety standards, businesses currently have to ensure that their customers follow the CoVid restriction rules while on their premises. By employing the right tech and a balanced approach most companies are succeeding in doing this. Here is how.
Automatic door sensors
In places where there are restrictions on the number of people that can be on the premises at one time, some firms have fitted a traffic light system to their doors. This is easy to set up and works automatically.
There is a sensor on the door that counts how many people go in and how many leave. Using this information, the system knows how many customers are in the store, at any point in time.
When the CoVid limit is reached, the entrance doors will no longer open. Usually, there is a red and green traffic light system set up at eye height that turns red when the store is full.
Most customers immediately understand what is going on and wait patiently until someone leaves, the system logs that fact and lets more people enter the store. To make this more likely to happen a lot of stores put up a visual display screen that explains how the system works and what the customer needs to do. This can be done using text, a video or a combination of the two.
The European grocery retail chain Lidl did something similar in all of their stores, across several countries. You can read more about the system they used here.
Using video displays to remind people of the rules
Most customer-facing businesses do not have the budget to have a member of staff standing at the door reminding people to put their masks on and use the hand gel. Even those that do have enough members of staff to do this choose not to put someone on the door. This is mostly because customers do not really appreciate being told what to do as they enter a store. Naturally, they tend to get a little annoyed, especially if they have been shopping all day and been told the rules at multiple stores.
Putting up a display screen that reminds customers what the restrictions are is a much gentler approach. Most people will see the message and comply without any further prompting. Digital signs can help keep customers safe in other ways during a health crisis. For example, in washrooms, small ones have been put up to remind people to wash their hands.
The message that they display can be tweaked and updated as the rules change. If the business uses a slideshow, they can choose to communicate this information in several languages.
Some businesses have taken things a step further, by playing CoVid safety videos that have been made by the health authorities. Helping to play a role in making people aware of what to do if a member of their family gets sick. As well as informing them about vaccines and testing drives.
Use QR codes
QR codes technology has been around for many years. It works really well when set up and deployed properly. Many hotels, hospitals and other facilities started to use them because of CoVid. It enables people to check-in without talking to anyone or having to pass their medical or payment card to a member of staff.
The code just needs to be included on a display screen that has been set up at hand height. When they arrive the customer, guest or patient simply opens the relevant app on their smartphone, scans the code and follows the instruction that appears on the screen.
Using tech to keep the premises hygienically clean
During the crisis firms have had to work very hard to keep their premises and everything their staff or customers touch hygienically clean. Many have been following guidelines like these which have been issued by their government to do so.
This has proved to be extremely time-consuming, inconvenient, and expensive. So much so that many retailers have decided to invest in cleaning tech to speed up the job. UV carts that cleanse large areas at a time have proved to be a particularly effective option. You can read more about how they work and have been deployed by stores across the world, in this article.
Employing the latest tech is helping all kinds of businesses to manage the CoVid crisis with a light touch. It has not been easy to find and implement some of these solutions. But doing so has opened the eyes of many firms to the fact that there is a lot of tech out there that could improve their business, which they are not yet using.
