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michael

Aug 26
0

The many values of a shopping centre message

By | Blog, In-Store

So much goes into running a functional shopping centre that sometimes, it can be easy to overlook the things that lead to a pleasant, vibrant atmosphere.

However, a well-informed shopper is a happy shopper, and because in-mall radio is the one medium guaranteed to reach 100% of shoppers with minimum effort, it can be a wonderful resource. Add the fact that messages can be scheduled to play at certain times of the day makes it a really great way to get a message out there.

But what type of message makes a worthwhile radio message?

The answer is, anything. However, to give you a little inspiration we’ve decided to give you our top 10 ideas for valuable messages.

Top 10 uses of a radio message

1. Support for marketing activity

How many times have you taken the time and effort to create a great, relevant in-mall activity, only to be disheartened by the turnout? That never needs to happen again. Simply make sure you send out a well-timed message in the build-up to the event and your shoppers will be sure to pay a visit. You can even create a series of messages that act as a countdown and help build engagement for a minimal cost – a very smart way to back up the investment made on the activity itself.

2. Increase spend

Approaching a key date such as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day? Don’t let your shoppers forget it! Send them strategic reminders that not only make them aware, but give them inspirations for gifts that you just so happen to have in store. Dynamite marketing.

3. Change trading hours

Whether you’re adjusting hours for the Bank Holiday weekend or preparing for Half Term, let your shoppers know it in advance – and during their visit – allowing them to plan their visits and avoid disappointment.

4. Dictate your shoppers’ pace

Do you want to slow your shoppers down to increase dwell time and spend? Play some nice relaxing music and tell them where the latest offers are. Or maybe you want to ensure you close on time? Play something with energy along with an audio message informing everyone you’re 15, 10 and 5 minutes away from closing to get them heading for the tills and exit doors.

5. Safety first

Customers who feel safe are more relaxed, and will therefore be inclined to stay longer. In the interest of safety, you can encourage people to report suspicious behaviour, remind people to be careful with valuables and also inform shoppers that the car park is monitored, etc, spreading peace of mind and detracting any thieves from trying their luck. Radio messaging can go a long way to keeping your mall a nice place to be.

6. Build an atmosphere

If you plan to embrace a particular theme – be it seasonal, such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween, or event specific, such as your local team winning the FA Cup – you can create a party-like atmosphere with bespoke shopper messaging, or even an especially made music playlist. Just let us know what’s happening and we can discuss a range of ideas.

7. Drive footfall

We have the ability to change the ambience and mood to cater for any demographic, and we can create specific music and messaging that push traffic into your retailers. One of our recent studies shows that radio messaging can increase the footfall of retailers by 19-25%, leading to a 5-15% increase in sales.

8. Be patriotic

Depending on where you’re situated, and also on the demographic of your shoppers, you might want to encourage the art of patriotism as we approach St. George’s Day, St. David’s Day, St. Andrew’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day – or any other day that makes you proud of where you come from. Nothing gets people in the mood to celebrate like music and messaging, and you can send shoppers wherever you want by mentioning which of your retailers are running the best deals that day.

9. Say thank you

Maybe it’s the birthday of a long-serving member of staff, or somebody you value is leaving the centre to go onto pastures new. Don’t let the momentous day pass with a whimper. Instead, be forward in saying thanks and let them know how important their contribution was. Don’t want to make a spectacle? There are subtle ways to do this, too, such as playing songs that hold meaning for the person in question. A lovely personal touch.

10. Advertise drop-off spaces

Have you got a pop-up crèche? There’s no better way to make mums and dads value you than by offering a fun space for their children to hang out in while they concentrate on doing their shopping. If you’ve got the resources to make your shoppers’ trip stress free and memorable, you definitely need to be talking about it.

There’s also another reason why you might prefer us to do your messages as opposed to getting your security team to speak over a public address system, and that’s the sound quality our messages provide. All our messages are read by professional voiceover artists and are recorded in a sound proof booth, using top standard industry equipment.

Remember, you can either choose ready prepared messages from our extensive audio list, or you can request your own messages to ensure every output is in line with your centre’s brand and personality.

If you’re an existing OnBrand customer, visit your Client Area now to schedule your messages. All new customers are welcome to contact us via sayhello@onbrandgroup.co.uk, or give us a call on 03333 220 022 to see how we can help your business.

Aug 22
0

Contact centre of the future: what does it look like?

By | Blog, Digital, On The Phone

very now and then comes a buzz word that gets everybody worked up to a frenzy. For instance, you can’t mention Pokemon Go these days without being trampled on by a herd of avid Gamers.

For many people who run a business, it’s highly likely they’ve heard the term “omni-channel” thrown around quite a bit over the past year, and so the debate begins: is omni-channel really the future?

What is omni-channel?

There are a few differentiating terms that help sum up what “omni-channel” is:

  • Multi-channel: meaning you offer a select choice of channels to your customers (IVR, SMS, web, email, etc)
  • Multi-modal: meaning you offer a mixture of channels whilst engaged, completing the customers’ journey in a single interaction
  • Omni-channel: meaning you offer many channels over a series of interactions with a claim to consider the entire customer journey

Put simply, “multi-channel” contact centres offer only a handful of contact options and hold the information from each separately, whereas “omni-channel” centres offer options across all eight points of contact, and have a full, unified view of all interactions.

The eight points of contact

  1. Voice (Inbound and Outbound)
  2. Video
  3. SMS
  4. E-mail
  5. Social Media
  6. IVR
  7. Self-Service
  8. Web Chat

Each of these contact points holds its own strengths and weaknesses, and catering for all of these comes with definite challenges, such as resourcing each area to a high enough standard to keep customers satisfied. So is omni-channel something each contact centre should aspire to, or is it more of an idealist dream?

Amazon, for example, would consider themselves an omni-channel brand, yet it’s very clear they only want to talk on the phone if they consider it absolutely necessary, so they deal with the vast majority of customers through self-serve and automated messaging. When things go well, the service appears faultless and it’s fantastic, but we still live in a world where many don’t like to – or aren’t able to – use technology. And even those happy to do so occasionally experience problems where they need to speak to a person, and it can be frustrating when that’s not an easy option.

This brings us onto another very important point.

Robot Vs Human

Streamlining and downsizing companies in favour of technology makes a certain amount of economic sense, but what is the knock-on effect of minimising the human interaction element of your company?

Self-driving cars are a good example of how opinion is divided, with some arguing there would be far less accidents if we removed human error. The more nervous among us though are entitled to ask a very important question: when the technology fails – and technology does fail – who will be accountable for the accidents caused?

Outsourcing

Some companies have realised that customers still crave human interaction, but in an attempt to cut costs they allow certain staff to work remotely. Again, there are pros and cons to this, but modern customers expect to receive the same experience regardless of what channel they communicate on, and it’s harder to drum a company’s ethos into staff that work outside of the office.

Also, if somebody answers the phone from home, what will the acoustics of their work space be like? If a customer calls Nike and hears a washing machine on in the background, it wouldn’t exactly fit the brand, and that can be a problem.

Fads and trends

When e-books became the next big thing, experts viewed sales charts on a weekly basis and claimed the rise in digital sales spelt the end for physical books. There was mass panic among traditional printers and publishers, and many knee jerk reactions as a consequence. However, over time the sales plateaued and it’s now clear there’s plenty of room in the marketplace for both to co-exist.

Final thoughts

For the majority of contact centres, the smart thing may be to just focus on a strong multi-channel offering and ensure their brand identity is strong across each one. After all, customers stay loyal to brands that offer great service, and aren’t so interested in how many ways they can connect with the contact centre. They’ll simply communicate via the method that best suits their own habits.

If resources are not an issue then omni-channel is great, but you must be prepared for it to shape your company in unexpected ways, too. For instance, when Twitter rose to prominence, many companies only created Twitter profiles to appear “in the loop.” Suddenly, their feeds were bombarded with unresolved complaints and, feeling the need to avoid public shame, the companies appeared to deal with these issues more urgently, which encouraged more customers to do use it as their go-to portal when they wished to vent their frustration.

There are now countless teams of social media account handlers all over the country that wouldn’t need to be in place had the companies in question not created a Twitter account in the first place, so the key takeaway is to consider your demographic carefully and understand their habits before taking the plunge into omni-channel. Once you do it, you are likely to be overwhelmed with correspondence across multiple channels, and unless you can deliver suitable responses it can do far more harm to your reputation than good.

Aug 02
0
Original content: what’s all the fuss about?

Original content: what’s all the fuss about?

By | Blog, Digital

The words “we need original content” are thrown around a great number of times during meetings, but what does it actually mean for your business? And why do the buzz words “original content” create such excitement, and often a little nervousness, amongst your colleagues?

The fact is, creating content for content’s sake is likely to have a negative effect on your business. Why? Because if you work hard to drive online traffic to your website but the site’s still a work in progress, or the blog they land on isn’t interesting, the site visitor is unlikely to return, and repeat visits is what you really want.

Some companies spend money every month on PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising with no emphasis on the quality of their content. The problem is, although it might be tempting to assume that 50,000 site visits shows success, it’s not so impressive if 49,000 people never return, because what this actually means is you’re leaking money.

To put is simply, good original content offers the following values to your website:

Freshness
Updates
Substance
SEO

Freshness
Within moments of landing on a website, your viewer can tell an awful lot about how the site is run. Unless the content is fresh and engaging – talking about current topics or solving problems that are relevant to them – they’re not going to stay too long.

Updates
Research from Nielsen Norman Group suggests that the average time for a page visit is less than a minute, with an overwhelming number of people taking just 10-20 seconds to decide it’s time to leave. Within this time, they would have read less than a quarter of the text on the landing page. It’s a brutal statistic, but it shows how important it is to update your pages regularly if you want to engage viewers and, more importantly, keep them coming back.

Substance
As we’ve established, seeing a web page is one thing, but reading it is quite another. So ask yourself if the content on your page is likely to make the viewer want to either act on the call to action (you do have one, right?) or share what they’ve read with other people? Only very well written, well presented content will have this effect.

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is, in simple terms, a way of connecting relevant content to the people that are searching for it. Although Google often changes its SEO rules, you need to include text that matches what your audience is looking for to bring them to your website organically, meaning you do so without paying for it.

The chances are, all of this makes complete sense to you, but actually implementing these principles on a daily basis takes a great deal of time and energy. That’s why “original content” is so difficult to create on a consistent basis – it’s never ending and fiercely subjective.

Manage to pull it off though – either by outsourcing the work or creating it in-house – and you can gain significant benefits to your business.

If you’re a Shopping Centre Manager, you’re able to tick all the boxes mentioned above with our Offers and Style products, which stream a live feed of current articles to drive customers in store to your retailers. All you need to do is pay a monthly fee, then let us create a bit of FUSS on your behalf.

Feel free to contact us today, or if you’d prefer to discuss your options over the phone, call 03333 220022 and we’ll gladly assist you.

Jul 27
0

Mall messaging made easy this Bank Holiday

By | Blog, In-Store

Different opening hours over the Bank Holiday? Let your shoppers know

Whenever your trading hours change, it’s important to give shoppers plenty of notice so they can plan when to get to your centre – and you don’t want to disappoint them by being closed when they get there.

The times that shopping centres operate over Bank Holidays varies greatly, so make the message clear by choosing a bespoke message for your mall. While we’re at it, we can also insert your shopping centre name and make the tone of the message in-keeping with your brand.

Need a little guidance? Take a look at the example message below:

Bank Holiday Messages
We can customise the following message, or choose something else entirely, to keep your shoppers in the loop.

Example Script
Welcome to ___ Shopping Centre. We’d like to remind you that we’ll be open from _am til _pm
this Bank Holiday Monday, and we hope to see you then. In any case, have a wonderful weekend.

If you remember, you could always deliver a crackly message over your public address system, but if you’d like to schedule high quality messaging to go out precisely when needed, feel free to get in touch with us today.

To all our existing customers, log into the Client Area to upload your new scripts.

Jul 20
0
Customer service – does yours satisfy or infuriate?

Customer service – does yours satisfy or infuriate?

By | Blog, In-Store, On The Phone

There used to be a saying that “the customer is always right,” which may be flawed when you view it as a blanket statement, but in terms of mind-set, it’s the only way to run a business. It shows a passion for customer satisfaction, and when customers are happy, businesses always have a chance to thrive.

“You’re going to hear me mention customers a lot,” says Steve Rowe, CEO of Marks & Spencer. “And for that, I will never apologise.” That’s how the brain behind M&S has been known to address a room, and all CEO’s should be just like that, shouldn’t they?

Indeed they should, so how has a recent survey run by the Express found that 93% of British shoppers feel “frequently wound up” by the shopper experience?

It seems that shoppers don’t only experience poor customer service, but that they do so repeatedly, citing pushy sales tactics and a disconnect between shoppers and retail staff as their main frustrations.

All of this puts a great responsibility on call centres, with customers filling the lines to register complaints. However, with poorly conceived telephony journeys, and incoming calls being outsourced to external call centres, many customer’s moods only seem to get worse once they pick up the phone.

Rather alarmingly, the Express’ survey states that 60% of customers are considering moving companies due to bad service, and that 10% of callers admit to being brought to tears due to the way they are handled.

These statistics make for terrible reading, and how ironic that this dip in customer service is happening during the “golden age” of social media, when people are supposed to have been brought closer together. Perhaps it’s the case that many companies are now so obsessed with becoming “omni-channel” brands that they accidentally spread themselves too thin.

Most customers – particularly when there’s a problem – prefer to communicate over the phone, so a company’s telephone journey is worth its weight in gold and can drastically increase the number of happy shoppers once implemented.

Jul 07
0
How to improve centre communications

How to improve centre communications

By | Blog, In-Store

When running a shopping centre, there are countless messages, policies and valuable information that needs to be delivered to your shoppers. Shopping Centre Radio offers a valid method of making sure you reach all shoppers, helping you run your centre as smoothly as possible. For example:

What’s your policy on E-cigs and Vaping?

 Let your shoppers know

 
Some shops sell E-cigs and vaping products, so many shoppers assume it’s okay to smoke them – but policy varies all over the country, so where do you stand?

Some centres allow them in certain areas, but not in the food courts. But how can you expect your shoppers to know without clearly stating it?

To avoid the risk of embarrassing customers, we recommend you make use of your radio to spread a clear message throughout your mall.

Health & Safety Messages
Our clients can choose from the following announcements to help keep shoppers safe and happy.

  • This is a customer announcement: in the interest of comfort and safety, the use of E-cigarettes and Vaping products is not permitted. Thank you.
  • This is a customer announcement: in the interest of comfort and safety, the use of E-cigarettes and Vaping products are not permitted within the mall. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

We don’t mind if you take inspiration from our scripts and address shoppers directly over your public address system, but wouldn’t you rather have professionally recorded messaging that fits your brand and tells shoppers what they need to know, precisely when you need them to know it?

At OnBrand, we create Targeted Retail Messaging for shopping centres covering every key date in the retail calendar, as well as facilities management, customer service, internal marketing and off-the-cuff topics such as Vaping policies. We can also make bespoke messages to help promote unique events, helping create a fantastic atmosphere within your mall.

This is why we fully believe in Shopping Centre Radio.

OnBrand Group

Jun 23
0
OnBrand Group’s Policy of Reducing Effort and Maintaining Experience Paid Off

OnBrand Group’s Policy of Reducing Effort and Maintaining Experience Paid Off

By | Blog, On The Phone

Providing a positive experience in a regulated environment can be a real challenge due to the level of information that legally needs to be provided to customers, often causing customers to switch off.

In a recent project with a major supermarket insurance provider, we proved that getting the Tone of Voice right and ensuring we provided phone menu options early in the call kept customers alert. Since implementing this strategy, our client’s customer self-serve has increased by 34% in just 3 months, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing costs of contact.

Taking advice from OnBrand Group on their telephone policy really did pay off!

Jun 15
0
Summer festival

Summer’s here – Music to get you in the mood

By | Blog, In-Store

We’ve got two great new playlists ready for the summer season ahead – Summer Sounds and Festival. You can read below the detail of each, and sample tracks you can click and listen to right away. Tracks certain to add some feel good summer factor to your day and that of your customers.

Summer Sounds

Summer is here but that doesn’t guarantee the sunshine. Our Summer Sounds playlist does! – it brings that shimmering feel-good factor flooding into your mall with a collection of 300 essential summer songs spanning from the Summer of Love to 80s & 90s summer nostalgia and on to the big holiday hits of today, all curated by us to suit the dynamics of your mall.

You can have a listen on our Spotify page or head straight to the Client Area and request it today.

Can’t wait? – here’s a taster of the tracks!

Festival

As the festival gates open across the country, we’ve compiled the ultimate playlist to bring a touch of that festival spirit to your mall. Featuring headliners such as Adele and Coldplay to the legends like Earth, Wind and Fire and ELO, our playlist celebrates the Great British festival and reflects the diverse range of music on offer while staying true to the sound of your mall, and we’re proud to include the breakthrough British acts making their mark this year, such as Jack Garratt and Oh Wonder.

You can have a listen on our Spotify page or head straight to the Client Area and request it today.

Spotify Page Client Area

Can’t wait? – here’s a taster of the tracks!

Jun 15
0
behind the scenes at sceptre awards

Behind the scenes at Sceptre Awards 2016

By | Blog, In-Store

Don’t miss the Sceptre Awards this year on the 21st June 2016 at its long standing venue The Dorchester Hotel in London.

We are proud to be sponsoring Marketing Manager of the Year again, and wish all the nominees good luck for the night. If you didn’t already know the Sceptre Awards recognise the best people and practices in the Shopping Centre industry. Every year we recognise the hard work, efforts, ingenuity and excellence produced by centre management teams, retailers and suppliers that make shopping centres the great places they are.

At OnBrand, we’re all about experience, and a live event is no different.

What you might not know is that we also work behind the scenes, and provide the sound, lighting and AV for the night too. Our work starts weeks before and involves the set design, build and installation on the night. We’ll be there from early am, setting up the stage, set, lighting, screens – all of course on-brand for 55 North, the team behind not just the Sceptre Awards but the highly acclaimed industry title Shopping Centre.

We pre-record the voice of god and prepare all music for the evening – from the soft tones of dinner, to the walk up stings for award winners, and post dinner chart hits to keep you in the mood. The pics below also show how even simple lighting can change the mood and ambience of the room too.

So, if you’re hosting an awards event, looking for a great experience, AV production partner, or simply some great ambience, then please get in touch. We use, audio, language, technology and AV to create great brand and customer experiences.

Hope to see you on the night, and If not don’t forget to follow all the action on Twitter.

We pre-record the voice of god and prepare all music for the evening – from the soft tones of dinner, to the walk up stings for award winners, and post dinner chart hits to keep you in the mood. The pics below also show how even simple lighting can change the mood and ambience of the room too.

So, if you’re hosting an awards event, looking for a great experience, AV production partner, or simply some great ambience, then please get in touch. We use, audio, language, technology and AV to create great brand and customer experiences.Hope to see you on the night, and If not don’t forget to follow all the action on Twitter.

The Sceptre Awards

Jun 03
0
Shopping Centre Crèche

Shopping Centre Crèche

By | Blog, In-Store

A one-stop drop that will really let shoppers shop

A happy shopper is one who has the freedom to glide between stores at will, taking their time to try things on and discuss new purchases with friends – but how often do we see restless children and concerned dads nagging away because they’re hungry, or because they’re missing the game?

There is a solution – a crèche, or a “man crèche,” if you will. A dedicated space for anti-shoppers to watch the latest game at the Euros or Wimbledon while those more interested in shopping can do just that.

If your shopping centre is wise enough to build such a facility, make sure your customers know about it by offering advanced messaging. It will ensure your mall is equally as popular during match time and also give the real shoppers the time and freedom to do what they do best – spend money!