SEDCO’s solutions were designed for social distancing even before COVID-19

If you’re struggling to strike a balance between serving your customers and applying social distancing rules in an ever-changing environment, you’re not alone. Ensuring a safe customer journey is more important than ever before. With SEDCO solutions you are up to meet these challenges, and beyond. 

With mobile appointment and touchless solutions, it’s possible today to eliminate queues and comply with the branch occupancy by controlling the number of customers served per counter in each of your branches, in order to maintain with social distancing. Your customers can issue e-tickets and join virtual queues, they can wait for their turn safely at a convenient spot inside or outside the branch. They receive a notification about their turn so they can get served immediately or check themselves in with a touchless experience.

If you haven’t already got the above strategies and many more in place, now is the time to make a change. Read more about how our solutions maintain a safer, more hygienic experience during the pandemic. 

Challenges Facing Essential Businesses

While many businesses have moved online or shut down altogether, customers still need access to face-to-face services like banking, healthcare, telecommunications, and the public sector. 

Businesses need to minimize human interaction, reduce touchpoints, increase hygienic interactions, maintain social distancing, and control capacity. At the same time, they may need to optimize their resource utilization and educate and reassure customers through the changes. 

These challenges may require big changes to your customer journey, depending on what current systems you have implemented. So, let’s talk about how SEDCO’s system can help.

 

Maintain Social Distancing Before the Customer Visit Starts 

Fortunately, if you manage or work in an essential business, there are some practical changes you can implement over the next few months so that you can safely serve customers, while prioritizing the health of your staff and supporting your local community.

If you’re a bank, retail organization, public sector company, or healthcare organization and you’re finding it hard to adjust your services and systems to social distancing, we can help here:

 

Mobile Appointment Booking to Minimize Human Interaction

One of the best ways to reduce human interaction is to introduce mobile and online appointment booking through mobile app or web, so customers can book and plan their visit in advance, and avoid a crowded waiting room.

Here’s how mobile appointment works:

• Customer opens the app (a booking interface like ours can be integrated into your existing mobile app, website, or call center).
• Then chooses the branch and selects the service.
• Then enters the preferred date and sees available time slots, and selects the time.
• Customer then, is asked to confirm the appointment
• Finally, the customer is issued an e-ticket via mobile app or SMS

A clear advantage of this module is that you can configure the time slots periods and the number of maximum allowed customers per each slot in order to make sure the customer traffic complies with occupancy of your branches and your local social distancing rules. 

One simple way to enforce these limits is to eliminate or control walk-ins, since you can’t predict the number of people you’ll have in your waiting areas. And instead use your online booking channels to plan your customer visits and ensure your face-to-face appointments don’t exceed the set limits. 

With capacity mapping and mobile booking, your business stays compliant and your staff, customers, and local community stay safe.

Mobile appointment booking is one of the best ways to implement social distancing for your customers during COVID-19, it also will help in eliminating the queues, so customers will even appreciate it after the pandemic is over, too. No one likes to wait any longer than necessary, and it’s a great way to empower your customers so they’re in control of their journey.

 

SMS Notifications to Maintain Social Distancing

Some companies have tried to minimize the risks associated with queues by marking out safe distances or turning customers away to reduce numbers. But there’s a much more streamlined way to manage queues and minimize the number of customers physically waiting at premises.

When you enable SMS Notifications as part of your customer journey touchpoints, your customers can wait inside or outside the branch, or even in their own cars. 

Customers will be notified with their turn approaches, they also will be called by SMS when their turn comes next, so they head to the right counter. This is one way you can provide a safer experience for customers and avoid a crowded waiting room.

Fever Screening for a Safer Customer Journey

Before your customers step towards your service counters, the system can check their body temperature automatically and detect visitors with a fever. Customers with high temperature will receive a different treatment to ensure safety.

This enables you to take protective measures that help maintain a healthier environment for your staff and customer.

Here’s how it works:

• Detect customers with a fever using a thermometer that is integrated in the ticketing kiosk
• Measure the customers’ temperatures at a distance, without exposing your staff to the health risks of using a manual temperature gun
• Prevent people with a fever from entering the branch

Hygienic Touchless Experience

 

Mobile Ticketing

With CEM mobile app, your customers can enter the queue virtually. This means they just need to be nearby or inside the branch, and using the CEM mobile, they can get an e-ticket, without touching the kiosk or getting a paper ticket. 

Here’s how our mobile queuing app works:

• Customer is nearby or approaching the branch. 
• Customer knows number of waiting customers and expected waiting time. 
• Customer selects the targeted service and gets an e-ticket.
   

Touchless Check-in Experience

To maintain a healthier experience for your customers with e-tickets, they can use the touchless check-in feature to confirm their arrival at your premises.

Touchless check-in works by:

• Detecting customer arrival to the branch by proximity beacon; customers get notified to check-in.
• Or, by tracking customer’s geolocation by mobile GPS, customer gets notified to check-in.
• Or, by scanning the QR code at the kiosk outside, in order to check-in. 

It’s important to take a short and long-term view when choosing solutions that can help you after the pandemic ends; invest in integrated digital solutions or upgrade your current SEDCO CEM with touchless technologies to ensure your business comes out stronger and better positioned to serve your customers than before.   
 

Mobile Feedback for a more hygienic customer journey

Customer feedback remains important, even during times of upheaval, but your usual feedback tools may not be suitable. It’s important that customers can get in and out as quickly as possible, and avoid touching anything unnecessary, like shared pen and paper. Ideally, you should integrate feedback with your mobile app so your customers can safely share feedback and complete their journey - in their own time and space. 

It’s also helpful to adapt your feedback system so it includes health and hygiene related questions, like:

• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the social distancing and hygienic setup at our branch?
• Did you feel that the staff who assisted you were being hygienic?
• Do you have any suggestions about how we can improve hygiene, minimize interaction, and better support social distancing?

 

Use Omni-channel Marketing to Guide and Enrich the Customer Journey

An omni-channel approach gives you more opportunities to promote your products and services to customers. You can personalize the experience with targeted advertising and provide a richer, more relevant customer journey. But during a pandemic, you can adapt your content to serve another purpose. For example, it’s a good idea to share health messages and instructions with your customers so they know what to expect. Inform them about any changes to the usual process, like: 

• Temperature scanning at the entrance
• Masks for protection
• Appropriate distances
• Where to queue
• Different opening hours
• Cleaning procedures and frequency
• Use of hand sanitizer at each device

These messages will help your customers feel confident that you’re prioritizing their health and safety, while reinforcing messages and behaviors that will help keep your staff safe. You can use all your channels to provide a calm and reassuring presence during an uncertain time, which can help minimize confusion and reduce cancellations. 
 

Now is the Time to Make a Change - Let Us Help You Get Back On Top of Things 

While many businesses need to change their systems to adapt to the current situation right away, they should also think long term. Here are some stats to back that up: 

• In 2019, 34% of surveyed businesses already had a transformation program in place
• 37% of organizations had already started integrating and executing a digital-first approach in 2018
• 90% of consumers want omni-channel service
• Around the world, people use a range of channels when first contacting a brand - 52% use online, 43% over the phone, and 5% in-person

In response to these trends, many of our customers are already well-positioned to face the challenges presented by COVID-19. Over the last decade, we’ve helped hundreds of organizations implement digital transformation solutions that are now enabling them to smoothly transition to social distancing practices.

Contact our team to talk about our solutions, including virtual queues, mobile/online bookings, our omni-channel marketing engine, and more. Let’s create a safer customer journey through the coming months and beyond.