- A convenience store retailer in the U.S. is employing a new solution from Sensormatic Solutions and HappyOrNot that collects shopper satisfaction responses and compares against traffic data.
- The Brand Vitality Meter solution was designed to help retailers optimize their staffing, displays and products for greatest shopper satisfaction.
Since January, customer and employee experience management company HappyOrNot, has been partnering with Sensormatic Solutions to provide a shopper feedback solution for retailers.
Now a U.S.-based convenience store company is using the Brand Vitality Meter system in some of its stores to identify not only shopper satisfaction based on responses to a digital, single-question satisfaction survey, but the traffic flowing through that store. The result is a solution that can help match sensor-based, observed shopper behavior, with customers’ own reported satisfaction, the companies said.
By using those analytics, retailers can make informed decisions to optimize their stores.
Measuring Shopper Experience
The Brand Vitality Meter system consists of Sensormatic’s overhead optical sensors in stores for traffic counting, its cloud-based ShopperTrak Analytics software, and HappyOrNot’s customer feedback offerings, altogether providing a more nuanced picture of what takes place at each site.
“Understanding what customers think is the most critical element of running a business,” said Scott Erickson, HappyOrNot’s global partnerships and alliances VP. That’s not always easy to accomplish in stores, especially for companies that have multiple sites, in addition to omnichannel sales.
HappyOrNot’s customer feedback management solution measures shopper satisfaction based on their response to a simple rating system regarding in-store performance and omnichannel services.
Combining Sensor Data with Feedback
In stores, shoppers go to the “Smiley” touch screen or terminal and select from four options in the form of green smiling to red frowning faces. Shoppers simply tap the response that best describes their experience and carry on with their shopping, purchasing or exiting the site.
The two overhead cameras at key points create a stereoscopic traffic counting system at entrances and key points throughout the store to track how many people are coming and going. The Smiley information then combines with traffic analytics and the retailer can view the content to better understand in-store trends and identify any challenges or changes that need to be made.
By combining the solutions, officials from both companies say they provide more accurate and specific measures that highlight how individual areas, displays or engagement opportunities impact overall satisfaction. Brand Vitality Meter includes new software and algorithms designed to provide a holistic evaluation of performance, to set benchmarks and measure progress, said Erickson.
“This holistic approach allows retailers to make sense of the ways customer satisfaction affects performance metrics like sales, conversion rate, average transaction sizes and others,” said Nick Pompa, Sensormatic Solutions’ traffic leader.
Taking a Step Ahead of Traditional Systems
Traditionally, there are countless methods retailers and vendors use to measure shopper visits and traffic, “but we believe our approach—simple counting—is the best way to get a clear picture of overall traffic,” said Pompa.
Asking for survey responses takes a more minimal snapshot for instance. “If you’re generalizing to the whole population from a small sample—no matter how you got it—you’re inevitably magnifying anomalies. What about people who are just passing by and happen to step into the sample area?”
Pompa argued that tracking individuals based on Bluetooth signals from phones has limitations, “If you’re using mobile data, what about people with two phones—or those who don’t have one? All of that can muddy the water, and those small errors can have significant impacts on analytics accuracy once generalized to a larger audience,” he said/
ShopperTrak Analytics achieves 98 percent accuracy regarding how many people are in an area or doorway. Unlike other options, this approach doesn’t rely on assumptions or estimations, Pompa added.
Variable Metrics
Some of the most popular metrics the software enables are peak traffic periods (power hours), traffic heatmapping, campaign efficacy, engagement and shopper demographics. In Brand Vitality Meter specifically, ShopperTrak Analytics data is used to develop a roadmap for experience improvement, according to Pompa.
By combining the two technologies, the solution is intended to help retailers compare store performance between different locations and track their progress. The system tracks just how many shoppers provide feedback versus the total number of shoppers who enter your location.
Brand Vitality Meter is now available through Sensormatic Solutions sales teams, said Pompa. Retailers who are existing Sensormatic customers can purchase HappyOrNot Smiley devices from Sensormatic; HappyOrNot customers interested in adding the Sensormatic tools to their solution suite can pilot a traffic program to evaluate the combined solution benefits. The tech companies showed the combined value of the partnership at NRF 2023 and launched the solution at the 2024 show.
Retailer Eliminates Guesswork
The convenience chain is using the resulting data to analyze and determine correlation of sales, customer satisfaction scores as well as labor data.
Already, Erickson said, “they have detected some moments during the week,” such as weekends and weekday afternoons, “when customer satisfaction is declining even if traffic was generally low.” With those insights, the retailer can adjust its labor assigned at that time to improve its shopper traffic and associate presence (STAR-ratio) while boosting customer satisfaction and sales performance.
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