Profile
Luxury vaping retailer IQOS uses virtual queuing and appointment booking software during Covid-19
Heated tobacco retailer, IQOS, which has 200 stores across 39 different countries, is using Qudini’s software to increase its in-store customer experience and sales. The luxury brand, which is owned by Philip Morris, uses Qudini’s queue management system and appointment scheduling software, which have played an instrumental role in keeping customers and store associates safe during Covid-19.
Sector
Retail
No. of stores
200+
No. of employees
8,0000
No. of customers
8.8m
5 minutes
average reduction in customer wait times
0
walkie talkies as staff now use Qudini
More
customers served and footfall driven into stores
What our clients say
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“As a store manager, I am now able to track the shop floor status in real-time.”
Store Manager | Asian Market Store
The challenge
Within IQOS stores, customers can speak to an advisor who explains how to use and care for the device in a 10-20 minute discussion. Across the globe and particularly within Asia, Europe and the Middle East, their stores receive high levels of customer traffic, who come to learn about and purchase the tobacco heating device. This means extremely long queues can build up, with customers often waiting to speak to an advisor or even queuing to just enter the store to top-up their devices.
Beyond a manual clipboard, the stores previously had no way of managing waiting customers, providing them with wait time updates or knowing which customers were coming in for a quick transaction. The resulting queues and confusion lead to lost sales as many customers walked out without service.
In addition, the retailer has sought to provide a more premium coaching experience, enabling customers to pre-book a session in-store or with one of their remote advisors.
The solution
To improve customer experience and operations across their new stores, IQOS undertook a global tender focused on finding suppliers to sit within their centralised technology ecosystem. After a rigorous selection process, they chose Qudini as their global supplier thanks to Qudini’s highly scalable, innovative and modern technology products, as well as their agility and flexibility as a supplier. The retailer has since deployed the queue management system and appointment scheduling software across its stores in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
This software helps IQOS to keep customers and store associates safe during Covid-19 by limiting the number of customers in-store and drastically reducing the amount of time customers spend in-store.
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The virtual queuing journey
• Store host greets customer and asks purpose of visit.
• Host adds customer to digital queue.
• Customer receive SMS with a link to watch their place.
• Customer receives an SMS when to return to store.
• Customer is greeted by host again and introduced to advisor. -
The appointment booking journey:
• A customer books an appointment within their local store or advisor.
• A confirmation SMS and email confirms the customer’s booking.
• A reminder SMS and email are sent the day before the appointment.
• The customer arrives in store and is greeted by the host, who introduces them to their advisor.
Results
Hover over the tile to read quotes from our customers
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Increased sales due to reduced walk-outs
The Qudini Queue Management System has eliminated the physical queue and reduced wait times causing fewer customers to walk out of the store without service. As such, more customers are served and purchase devices.
Increased sales due to better customer triaging
The Qudini Customer Host App enables the store host to greet every customer coming in and understand their needs, allowing the store to serve quick transaction customers swiftly and effectively.
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Driving future revenues
With Qudini, advisors speak to more potential customers enhancing future sales revenue. This also increases the number of customers likely to tell their friends about the brand.
Improved store productivity
Customer service times have reduced by an average of 5 minutes per customer. By spending less time managing the queue and more time completing tasks and serving customers, Qudini maximises the staff productivity whilst still ensuring premium customer service levels.
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Advanced shop floor management
The Qudini interface and Shop Floor Management features provide staff greater visibility of store activities and improve communications across the shop floor. As such, they no longer need to use walkie-talkies to communicate, which further reduces hardware costs for the business.
Better resource allocation
Qudini enables the retailer to access analytics on their customer footfall patterns and needs. This enables them to better plan resources around the times of day when they are needed most.
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Greater business intelligence
Qudini provides the retailer with rich insights on their store operations and customer demographics, helping them to continually improve their business and sales.