WiFi: A Product Every Business Can (and Should) Offer

Your customers spend every day focusing on the core product or service they offer — whether that’s accounting services, pizza or shoes. They may think that by offering the best, fastest, or least expensive accounting services, pizza or shoes, they’re doing everything they can to attract new customers and repeat business.

However, the experience that customers have with their business can be equally important as what they sell or offer. That experience depends on a number of variables, including location, opening hours, friendliness of the staff, and promptness of service. Today, the customer experience also depends on the “extras” the customers expect — which includes free WiFi service.

Providing free WiFi is a small investment from your customer, but results in big dividends by driving both new and repeat business. For businesses with waiting rooms, such as mechanic shops, doctors’ offices, and professional services firms, it gives customers a way to stay entertained while they wait. For businesses with general public access like retail stores, restaurants and hotels, it lets customers stay connected with and share their experiences on social media during their visit and gives them a reason to linger and order more. It also gives these businesses a quick and efficient way to check customers in/out and process payments.

For all types of businesses, free guest WiFi can also provide an effective marketing tool by allowing them to employ a more sophisticated social media strategy, giving them the ability to promote specials and offers on your branded log-in page, and letting them use location-based services to drive foot traffic.

Offering free WiFi to customers doesn’t need to mean sacrificing their own business WiFi speeds or security. For example, with WiFi Pro from Comcast Business, they’ll get completely separate WiFi networks for public and business use. With fast connection speeds and no bottlenecks, their staff will be able to continue to use mobile devices to get their jobs done, regardless of the volume of guest traffic. Business data and transactions remain secure behind a private WiFi firewall, and they can also set the public or guest WiFi to only be available during certain hours and to filter out certain types of content.

See the full story here on the Comcast Business Community.