Article
Serving up guest Wi-Fi? It's not as easy as it looks
A franchisee simply plugging in a wireless router with password protection (if that) is a reckless strategy, exposing both customers and store data to the potential dangers lurking on the Internet.
October 7, 2014
By Tim Tang, Hughes Network Systems
The only thing worse than no guest Wi-Fi … is bad guest Wi-Fi.
Today, QSR franchisees are rolling out guest Wi-Fi to enable new initiatives such as loyalty programs and mobile ordering to enhance the customer’s experience. Very quickly, they may realize the consequences of a haphazard Wi-Fi implementation — compromised customer satisfaction, sacrificed data security, and operational challenges.
Deploying Wi-Fi in the restaurant environment is a technically complex, capital intensive initiative. Getting it right the first time is critical to avoid significant losses in customer satisfaction and sales. The following are the six critical components that QSR franchisees must address in order to roll out a robust and effective guest Wi-Fi service.
1. Formal Wi-Fi policy
Perhaps the most critical issue is not having an enterprise-wide Wi-Fi policy in place. Without a formal policy, individual managers may take matters into their own hands.
In an age when consumers expect to be connected to the Internet wherever they go, franchisees without Wi-Fi may feel compelled to implement their own Wi-Fi hotspots without considering the pitfalls. This can expose their stores to many minefields, including serious security breaches, damage to the brand, or worse, lawsuits. Consistency is key for the brand, as well as the multi-site franchisee. Customers may visit multiple locations within the brand and they will expect the same guest Wi-Fi experience just as they expect the same food and dining experience.
QSR franchisees, along with their brands, should either establish very clear strategies and rules for deploying in-store Wi-Fi across branch locations or formally prohibit in-store Wi-Fi altogether.
2. Operational planning
Before implementing guest Wi-Fi, franchise owners need to ask themselves, “Do I want to be an ISP? Do I have the core competencies and support infrastructure for managing a customer-facing Internet service?”
Wi-Fi requires substantial installation, operations, field maintenance, and call center services.If customers pull out their smartphones and then endlessly wait to connect to a Wi-Fi network, and then wait again to reach their desired Web site, they will be frustrated and alienated before they’ve even made their purchases. If the customer was trying to place an order or redeem loyalty points, the store may lose immediate and future product sales.
As with fresh food, good service, and clean restrooms, every aspect of the customer experience reflects heavily on the store and the brand. However, providing great Wi-Fi service isn’t core to a QSR’s business. It makes no sense to degrade an otherwise pleasant restaurant experience with a poor Wi-Fi experience. QSRs have the option to outsource the guest Wi-Fi service to experienced solution providers so they can focus on their core business activities.
3. Security
Security is another area where having ISP-grade competency is critical. A franchisee simply plugging in a wireless router with password protection (if that) is a reckless strategy, exposing both customers and store data to the potential dangers lurking on the Internet. Such an approach may violate a brand’s PCI compliance requirements. Upgrades to the QSR’s internal restaurant network may be needed to maintain compliance. An experienced managed services provider can ensure any changes to the network architecture maintain PCI compliance.
Providing nothing but raw connectivity also exposes customers to the threat of nearby hackers. QSR franchisees need to implement ISP-grade firewall, malware, anti-virus, anti-spam, and content filtering solutions. If customers were to lose all their information due to an Internet virus while they were in a particular restaurant, they’ll blame that franchisee and brand for running an insecure guest Wi-Fi network and risking their precious personal data.
4. Scalability & Performance
The more customers in the restaurant, the more demands on the Wi-Fi network. A customer’s worst Wi-Fi experience will occur during the restaurant’s peak sales opportunity. How will franchisees plan for the crush of traffic that might exceed the broadband capacity in their restaurants?
All Wi-Fi solutions are not created equal. QSR franchisees need to adopt advanced techniques and technologies to increase the scale and performance of the available broadband bandwidth. Effective solutions include incorporating real-time compression algorithms to create extra virtual bandwidth and employing quality-of-service (QoS) technologies to prioritize time sensitive applications that drive sales. Typically the same broadband network will carry the restaurant’s business traffic, as well as the guest Wi-Fi traffic — proper QoS and prioritization techniques are required to ensure critical data, e.g. POS traffic, have guaranteed access to bandwidth while still allowing a great customer Wi-Fi experience.
5. Installation
Restaurants present a challenging Wi-Fi environment full of potential signal interference. Food preparation areas, refrigerators, microwaves, and even stacked cases of beverages wreak havoc with Wi-Fi signals. Wi-Fi implementations need to be carefully planned to ensure complete coverage. Even a restaurant with a small footprint may need several Wi-Fi access points for a high-quality customer experience.
6. Future proofing
While Wi-Fi begins with simple Internet connectivity requirements, it has the potential for completely revolutionizing the customer’s experience. Wi-Fi may enable a restaurant to anonymously collect and correlate a customer’s preferences in order to anticipate their wants/needs and proactively provide personalized promotions. Wi-Fi may be used to stream videos and games to entertain loyal customers. Future technologies, including Bluetooth Beacons and tabletop tablet devices, may bring new performance demands to enhance the customer experience.
Mobile ordering applications on the customer’s mobile device are becoming more and more prevalent. Restaurants deploying these applications while relying exclusively on 3G/4G connectivity from the user’s device are taking tremendous risks with their customer’s experience. A basic Wi-Fi deployment may not have the capacity or scalability to handle the increased usage these applications demand.
The simplest or cheapest solutions are often the most limiting. In order to maximize future opportunity, QSR franchisees need to design flexibility into today’s Wi-Fi deployment with a solution that can quickly be enhanced and upgraded when needed.
A poorly deployed Wi-Fi service may do more damage to the restaurant’s reputation than not having any Wi-Fi at all. Operators need to ask themselves if they want to be an ISP. And if so, do they have the in-house skills and resources to handle all the planning, bandwidth, security, physical interferences, and other complexities that come with being an ISP? If they’d like to spend their time running their restaurant, not a network, employing a managed service provider might be the best alternative.The MSP will manage the guest Wi-Fi network entirely, from hardware and software to maintenance and support. Lastly, but equally important, the right technologies need to be deployed to maximize the efficiency and performance of the broadband bandwidth used for Wi-Fi. Not only is the quality of the Wi-Fi architecture important, but so is the network that connects to it. These two work together to provide a great Wi-Fi customer experience.
Tim Tang is director of Vertical Solutions at Hughes Network Systems.
Photo provided by Wikipedia.
