With the advent of the global pandemic, retail needs to be made safer for both staff and customers. Social distancing is key in the fight.

We are inspired by the scale of the opportunity.

Retailers need to solve three closely related issues with regard to social distancing:

1. Limit the number of customers in-store
   Number of customers inside need to be monitored and controlled, therefore, customers entering and leaving need to be counted.

2. Queues at the entrance
   By limiting the number of entries, queues may build up in front of the premises, increasing risk of infection and significantly reducing customer experience.

3. Avoid strore visits and redirect customers online
   Even if the store has their online selling solution, there are a number of customers who visit the store in person. Retailers may want to redirect some of their customers to online channels to reduce in-store physical contact as much as possible.

Linistry provides an integrated and easily deployable solution for all three issues, now on a non-profit basis:

1. Store Control
   • Store staff easily register customers entering and leaving the store with a click on a phone or tablet.
   • Number of customers in-store visible and controllable at all times
      
2. Queue Control
   • Customers can register or be registered on-site or remotely to a digital queue and will be notified before it is their turn. No application download needed.
   • The speed of the digital queue is automatically controlled by the number of customers in-store.
      
3. Channel Redirection
   • The virtual queuing platform can be used to recommend people alternative, electronic channels (online store, call center, mobile app, chatbot, etc) instead of personal visits.

Our solution is up and running, ready for international deployment in 1 day only (cloud solution, no need of local presence when deploying)

Expected impact

• Based on our experience (4 million people)
• We can reduce the duration of physical contact by 70-90%
• The chance of the infection can be reduced by 60%, because of the reduced physical contact time and the limited number of people in the store
• Retailers can reserve their revenue stream thanks to the safe queueing, purchansing and the online redirection
• Customer experience is improved

What we need to continue the project

• We need to share our value proposition with the target market (select the right channel, find the right messages and funds to advertise)
• We need to do a legal check in all countries where it will be deployed (500-800EUR/country)
• We need to find funds to cover the increased expenses of our platform, Microsoft Azure (~1000EUR/month)

Value after the crisis

• Even if the crisis is over, our life won't be the same. Health safety will be more emphasized than before. Remote queueing for certain in-store services (like on-line order pickup, customer services, sales consulting and other internal services) will help stores secure the safest solution for their customers while it is a very comfortable and time saving feature for us all.
• Thanks to the Channel Redirection, remote queuing can be used to route buyers to the optimal channel (on-line or off-line) and even route customers within the store e.g. to the approriate sales person.

Built With

• .net
• angular.js
• azure
• machine-learning
• microsoft
• powerbi
• restapi

Try it out

• landing.linistry.com