Alicia Stima wanted more information about her customers. As controller of the eight D.O. Summers stores in Northeast Ohio, it’s vital she knows how customers use the services the dry cleaner offers.
But all Stima had to go on was less than scientific — and rather nondefinitive — anecdotal information provided by employees; simply put, nothing you’d want to make major business decisions on.
That’s when Stima purchased six handheld interactive U-Tellus devices from InfoInteractive Inc. The devices, roughly the size of a computer screen, allow customers to answer five questions — each with five possible answers — by pushing a button. The information is then downloaded into a computer, which offers a variety of reports.
“We thought about having comment cards in the past,” Stima says. “It’s a piece of paper. Some people pick them up; most people don’t. I think people like to interact with something. So being able to push a button, I thought, would make them respond more.
“They didn’t have to worry about having a pen or a pencil. All they had to do was be standing there. And it’s something they can do quickly enough while they were in our store. So we weren’t asking them really to do anything extra.”
The first question Stima asks is how many times customers have visited the store. The second question deals with employee response time.
According to Gus Argento, InfoInteractive’s regional account manager, the device has been available since February. It is portable, or it can be mounted to a holder on a counter. Once the data is collected, it is fed into a computer, which churns out up to four different types of reports: a bar graph, a text report, a combination bar graph and text report or a trend report.
“A small time shop owner, if he’s working there all the time and he knows all his customers, he can do the same thing this can do,” says Robert P. Bura, InfoInteractive’s president. “In most businesses, the owner is not behind the counter anymore, or not in direct contact with the people.”
This device allows a business owner to get a feel for what customers are thinking.
It also works on another level, Stima says: It’s a great marketing tool.
“The third question had to do with whether or not they were using coupons,” she says. “Mostly we asked that just so they knew that there were coupons. Then we asked if they used our drive-through window. Again, we mostly wanted them to know that there was one.”
InfoInteractive offers the U-Tellus device two ways. A starter kit costs about $795. The company more recently devised an al a carte service, which allows clients, in effect, to rent the devices for a period of time. The initial package, Argento says, is $186, which includes four data reads and a one-time $48 charge for creating the card with the questions.
“We have a suggested year program,” he says. “That would give them enough feedback on a consistent basis from the customer so they can get a trend.”
And that is exactly what Stima is looking for.
“It’s nice the way it trends the report,” she says. “It will hold the data and let me see whether or not it changes over time. So I can see if more and more people start to use the drive-through window, for instance.” How to reach: InfoInteractive — (216) 595-3980; D.O. Summers —(216) 291-1177
Daniel G. Jacobs ([email protected]) is senior editor at SBN.
