Reporting overcrowded conditions is a high value application of BlueZoo products. Accurate real time counts for spaces, especially those with many entrances and exits, allows businesses to keep consumers and employees safe. Reopening becomes practical without the overhead of keeping staff at each entrance. Both staff and visitors know the real time count and can behave accordingly.
Sometimes, publishing occupancy of spaces to web pages or mobile phone apps is the right solution. Several BlueZoo corporate and education customers deploy our sensors in each of several restaurants. Restaurant occupancy is disseminated via web pages that report occupancy – which is a great proxy for wait time. Employees and students can make informed decisions about where to eat among several choices. Customer satisfaction is improved and food waste is reduced. People reduce crowding painlessly by simply making informed decisions about where to eat.
Sometimes, digital signage at the entrance to a restaurant or retail store is the right solution. Posted occupancy rates allow staff and patrons to be aware before entering. If patrons might be reluctant to enter a restaurant, put off by possible crowds inside, a real time count can allay those fears.
If a retailer is trying to help customers understand that a store (or restaurant) is crowded, a real time count of occupancy, showing historical occupancy and a prediction of wait time can relieve staff of the task of explaining the wait to impatient customers. No staff are needed at the entrance unless a certain occupancy threshold is reached, saving staff resources.
BlueZoo customers can predict wait time because BlueZoo knows the historical rate at which visitors leave when the space is at any occupancy level. The retailer can decide if they want an optimistic (short) or pessimistic (long) wait time from the probability distribution that BlueZoo can provide.
Case study
Cedarville University has seven locations where students can go to get their food and uses BlueZoo to broadcast the occupancy of each dining location to students via the University website.
Once deployed with real time occupancy data, Cedarville’s CrowdChecker web app became the most popular page on Cedarville’s website.
