Car dealerships represent unique challenges in people counting when compared to more traditional retailers. It is not as simple as a customer coming in, buying a car, and then leaving again. Dealerships are a more complex retail environment, with customers coming in for a myriad of reasons: car servicing, new parts, and, of course, buying a new or used car. Salespeople frequently enter and leave to show customers cars or take them on test drives, and people coming in for car servicing may still browse the showroom. This means that not everyone is a potential buyer, and with people coming and going throughout the day, the same individuals can be counted more than once, artificially inflating traffic figures.

Trying to address all of these challenges with traditional people counting technology makes for a complicated task. However, Re-ID is here to help.

Car dealerships are not a static environment. They are huge spaces with multiple entrances and indoor and outdoor areas. Visitors may go in and out on multiple occasions to look at different cars or take a test drive. This presents two challenges:

• Ascertaining the actual number of visitors to the dealership
• Excluding employees who are joining the customers on their journey from the final count

Traditional exclusion technology necessitates employees wearing a lanyard or a name badge with a barcode that the traffic counting sensor can recognize. This already presents challenges with employee compliance, as well as ensuring that the lanyard/badge doesn’t accidentally get covered up, worn incorrectly, or damaged. There can also be reluctance from retailers themselves to utilize these, as they are not always aesthetically pleasing and don’t necessarily align with company branding.

However, Re-ID’s innovative technology uses artificial intelligence to recognize who is an employee, and who is a customer. Based on employee uniforms and time spent in the dealership, Re-ID is able to understand who employees are and subsequently remove them from the overall traffic count. This also means it can measure customer engagement and how long employees take to attend to visitors, which is of paramount importance in car dealerships.

Another unique benefit of Re-ID is its ability to track individuals throughout their visit to the dealership. The technology assigns a unique user ID to each person, meaning that even if there is a break in their journey where they disappear from view (for example going for a test drive, sitting in a car, going out to the parking lot), when they reappear, they will be recognized. This means that the same person is not counted multiple times as they move around the showroom. Car dealerships can also use this to measure performance of particular zones – for example: which cars attract the most attention, if traffic to the area changes once a car is switched out for another one and how long people are spending looking at a particular car. It also brings the benefit of requiring significantly fewer devices to track customers and map customer flow, as visitors don’t need to be visible 100% of the time. This makes the solution much more affordable.

People visiting a car dealership are not all there for the same reason. There will be people bringing their cars for services who may also later browse the dealership (therefore skewing conversion for car sales). Then there are people shopping for new cars, who need to be distinguished from the service clients. Additionally, there are customers shopping for a used car, who often move between the indoor and outdoor areas of the dealership, adding additional traffic counts to the total. Altogether, it seems impossible to get a true sense of conversion rates and how many visitors there actually were, but Re-ID resolves these issues.

Using Re-ID’s unique identifiers, car dealerships can gain a true understanding of their conversion rates. Re-ID can count the number of people who just look at new cars, versus those who also look at used cars, versus those who brought their cars in for servicing. By filtering out duplicate counts and understanding the actual amount of people who came in to look at cars versus servicing and/or parts, a more accurate conversion figure can be obtained. It also means that customers’ paths through the dealership can be better understood.

Re-ID is a game changer for car dealerships: being able to accurately track individual customers and their journey throughout the showroom, differentiate between different types of customers, and accurately assess conversion rates are now all possible with Re-ID technology. This is in addition to being able to easily exclude employees from the count. Re-ID optimizes both traffic and conversion, while providing insights into employee engagement, shopper journey, and usage of areas.

Excited to hear more? Contact Sensormatic.