Everybody loves free WiFi.

Coffee drinkers and restaurant-goers often choose a venue based on whether they can get online, quickly and reliably. But something’s changed in the market, and it’s this: the new generation of WiFi technology doesn’t just benefit the customer, it benefits the venue owner, with rich, deep insights into their customers. That has big implications for how they run, market and advertise their business. Gary Disley (pictured), Director of Small Business with eir Business, explains why.

Old-style public WiFi did one thing, and not always brilliantly well: it got customers online, adequately enough to check email or post a status update. New-style WiFi, like the Advantage WiFi service that was recently launched by eir Business, is a different thing altogether. If you remember just a few things about WiFi now versus WiFi then, it should be these:

Find out who your customers really are.

Modern WiFi services let the venue owner gather contact information, like email addresses and mobile numbers, from any customers using their WiFi. The portal eir Business has set up for venue owners meansthat with just a few clicks you can get a full list of contact details and really start building a communication relationship with your customers, contacting them if you have offers or promotions. If your customers log on to your WiFi using Facebook, even better: gender, age, and other details will also be available, letting you draw a fuller portrait of your customer base.

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Controlling how customers use the WiFi is easy.

Have you ever seen people loitering outside a closed shop in the evening, hanging off the shop’s always-on free WiFi? Have you noticed people lingering for an hour in front of an empty coffee cup in a crowded café because they’re busy online with the free WiFi? Newer WiFi services like Advantage WiFi let the venue owner decide how much free access customers get, and for how long (including opening hours). Add to that the ability to set up whitelists and blacklists – for example, the venue owner might decide to block streaming websites like Netflix that gobble bandwidth – and it’s clear why venues benefit more from a modern WiFi service that puts them in control.

Customers love free WiFi.

I’ve already mentioned that one, but it’s worth repeating. If you’re a venue owner offering sub-standard WiFi, your customers will get annoyed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s free. Customers see your free WiFi offering as part of your business and your brand and they expect it to work reliably and quickly, just as they expect tidy tables and clean restrooms.

Advantage WiFi offer from eir Business makes it a lot easier to please customers, because it automatically upgrades you, the venue owner, to the fastest possible broadband connection available, and that means fibre speeds of 100MB per second if you’re in a fibre area. Online content is only going to get more bandwidth intensive. If you’re offering free WiFi to your patrons,it’s important to get the bandwidth right.

Busy business owners get more from modern WiFi.

Small and medium-sized businesses have so much to think about, from staffing to sales to health and safety, but the intriguing thing is that offering a free WiFi service actually fits right into the business owner’s priorities. Imagine being able to click on your WiFi management portal and see at a glance, in graphical form, when your customer WiFi service (and, by extension, your premises) is busiest. Does that affect your staffing?

What about customer demographics? You think that you’re close to your customer base, but what if the analytics show that your average customer is a lot older – or a lot younger – than you thought? Those WiFi analytics give you the hard data that lets you make business decisions about where to advertise your business to attract more of the kind of customer you’re after.

This is a great time to be a business owner because technologies like public WiFi are so much more powerful now. What used to be seen simply as a cost centre actually pays for itself quite quickly in the form of business value: customer contact details, customer demographics, and data on footfall peaks and troughs.

What’s your plan for meeting your customers’ need to get online? Find out more at business.eir.ie/advantage-wifi.