As we are living in 2023, the availability of the Internet has become a need for everyone. Because now everything is connected with the availability of the internet. We need the internet while at home, office or school, at shopping malls, restaurants and at our coffee shop also. The rate of usage of the Internet is getting higher day by day, there are 5.18 billion people using the internet in 2023 worldwide.
With this information, we can get to know the importance of the Internet in people’s lives today. Our life is moving forward because of technology, now we are doing our everyday activities with the help of the Internet.
If you are a coffee shop owner, then you must understand people’s need for the Internet and you must know how to fulfill their need.
Importance of WiFi in Coffee Shops
Today, everyone has smartphones, laptops, and tablets with them all the time. And people like to work remotely from anywhere. Most people like to work while having a delicious cup of coffee. For this they visit your coffee shop to enjoy your delicious coffee with a calm ambiance and a stable internet connection.
Free wifi in any restaurant or coffee shop is a customer’s expectation from you and your organization. Customers consider it a part of your hospitality and gesture of goodness. If you do not consider these requirements of your customers, they will get dissatisfaction and will get disappointment in your coffee shop.
It might be possible that they switch to another coffee shop. Because the competition is very high these days, we can find coffee shops at every second corner of the road. So, be careful while deciding upon the customer service of your business.
Tips for Managing Your Coffee Shop WiFi
Before offering free wifi service to your customers, first, you need to take into account some important factors which can help you provide a hassle-free service to your customers.
So let’s at look these factors one by one:
1. Usage of Customers
While providing customers with free wifi, you need to understand the needs of your customers and how they are going to use your service. Which devices customers are going to connect with your wifi? Are they going to connect mobile, tablet, or laptop? Will they simply check and send mail or are they going to stream a video or a movie? Do you have loyal customers of the business community who visit your coffee shop every morning to grab their favorite coffee before going to the office?
Understanding your customer’s behavior is very important for every business. It helps them to improve or amend their customer service according to customers needs. Similarly, it will help the coffee shop owner to choose an internet connection speed and the right equipment to run it. Many people prefer to spend their snack break in a coffee shop in order to refresh themselves.
If customers are satisfied while working in your coffee shop, they will make a habit to visit it every day and become your loyal customers in no time.
2. WiFi Speed
Managing your wifi speed is a big concern for you as a coffee shop owner, particularly if you are providing a free wifi service to your customers. If you provide low internet speed to your customers then they will remember you as a coffee shop with slow internet speed.
Pleasing your customers is very crucial these days, they want all in one bucket. It can be costly to provide a high speed internet but you must go for it in order to retain customers. You must provide your customers with more than 20mbps internet speed or more than this.
We mainly focus on download speed, but in your case, fast processing of web pages and fast uploading speed should also be a concern. Because you do not know how customers are going to use our wifi. It also depends on the size of your business, if you are running a small coffee shop, you can choose a normal-speed wifi connection.
3. WiFi Equipment
Fast speed and reliability of internet connection depend on the selection of the right device or equipment. On a primary level, you will need a modem and a wireless router. It will be best to purchase a modem of premium quality.
It is also important to place your wifi device in a suitable place. You should not place it in a cupboard or any cabinet in order for its safety. It will block the wifi waves coming from the router. So, you should place your router in an open place from where it can transmit signals easily.
A router works to transmit signals for your wifi, giving access to your customers so they can easily connect with your wifi. A bad router can be proved as a bottleneck for your business. You must do some research while purchasing your router. To cover huge space, it is best to buy a router that is available with pre-installed advanced settings to adjust configurations.
4. Security
It can be challenging to offer wifi to your customers at the coffee shop. Such as you set one password at your home for wifi for all your homies but that’s not safe in the case of coffee shops. Your official system, point-of-sale devices, and payroll system should have a separate internet connection.
Business needs are different from customers’ needs so it will be very naive to share the same internet. Because you can not compromise the confidentiality of your business information and security. Besides this, you should also be aware of your customers not entering sensitive information while using public wifi.
These days it is very common that when customers enter their credit card numbers, hackers hack their card numbers and withdraw cash from their accounts. That’s why it is important to think twice before entering your personal information.
5. WiFi Password
The security of your wifi also depends on your password. Choosing a strong password and how to display it also plays a vital role while securing your wifi from hackers or other unwanted users. Some restaurants display their passwords prominently on a board or on your table with a welcome note. This is not the right way to maintain security.
You should write your password on your dining mat so that no one other than your coffee shop customer could connect to your wifi. One more corrective step you can take is that you write it on your brochure or menu card in order to be careful of idle customers who just come to sit and use free wifi without ordering coffee or food.
Choosing a strong password is also essential, if you chose the easiest password for your wifi, it can be easily hacked. Your password should be tricky, it should include symbols, lowercase letters, and numbers. But it is also important that it can be easily readable by customers. Also, you should change your password after every week or thrice a month in order to limit its access.
6. Use of Captive Portals
People find it annoying when they see a captive portal feature before connecting to any open wifi. Whenever you try to connect with free wifi, then first you will be redirected to a page where you will be asked to accept the terms and conditions of that network.
Captive portals are very important in the sense that it helps the users to understand the terms and conditions of the usage of your network. It restricts them to open only a limited number of websites, so that they may not try to do anything illegal while using our network.
There are some services available online that might help you to activate a captive portal. Or you can also hire an IT expert to help you in setting up your captive portal.
7. Limiting Guest User Access
This is an advanced step you can take for the security of your network. You should use a tool for the management of bandwidth to monitor the traffic on your network by any app or IP address. You can also get alerts or notifications there will be unusual traffic on your network or when it will decrease.
It all depends on your router whether you can enable this feature or not and sometimes on your ISP. When you are choosing your ISP, you should also ask if this service is available or not.
8. Educate Yourself About Wifi Offerings
Once you set up a free wifi system for your coffee shop, it is also necessary to educate your staff on how to use it and how to share it with customers. If you have decided to change your password daily for safety purposes, then your staff should learn how to reboot the router and change your password daily. All the workers should also know how to handle any issue regarding the internet connection of WiFi.
When customers enter a coffee shop after being seated, they will ask for a password. Each staff member should know the password of wifi so that without any inconvenience customers could enjoy wifi. As an owner of a coffee shop, you should advise them to share passwords only with those customers who are ordering coffee, not with those who are just sitting and ordering free water.
It should also be prohibited to share business wifi passwords, staff should only share passwords of free wifi.
9. Turn off the Wifi
If you are using a wifi connection with high-speed internet and a wide range of signals, then it is mandatory to turn off your wifi when you close your coffee shop. So that people living nearby your coffee shop could not take advantage of using free wifi for the whole night.
It is important particularly, if your coffee shop is located in a residential area, then there will be a lot of people who could connect to your wifi and can enjoy Netflix. It can affect your internet speed and can be troublesome for your customers to use slow speed wifi.
If you have an internet connection from an advanced company, they can set it on an automatic mode for turning off. Or you can also turn it off by yourself daily.
Benefits of Offering Wifi to Customers
There may be unexpected benefits to providing customers with wifi at your coffee shop. It does not seem real sometimes to imagine that by providing this service you can increase your revenue.
But this is true to some extent like by satisfying your customer with the best customer service, you can increase customer retention.
Some benefits are mentioned below:
i. Customer will Increase Your Sales
When customers have free wifi connected to their devices, they are likely to spend more time in your coffee shop. As a result they order coffee and more food, and in this way, they will spend more money in your coffee shop.
Whether they buy an extra coffee cup or an extra slice of cake, they will buy it for the sake of free internet to spend more time in your coffee shop.
Their repeated visit to the shop will gradually increase your revenue.
ii. You’ll Acquire More Customers
By providing your customers with free wifi service will help you to make them your loyal customers. Whenever they crave coffee, they will not even think of another coffee shop except yours.
You will also acquire more customers because of positive word-of-mouth marketing. Existing customers will also help in winning more new customers.
iii. Increase Marketing of Coffee Shop
When you give free wifi service to your customers, you can also tackle your customers by letting them participate in your market campaigns.
With the help of professional IT experts, you can design your landing page in a way that contains advertisements for your coffee shop. You can also place ads for new promotional offers on this page.
You can also announce a free coffee cup for those who will post your coffee on their social media account by mentioning your location and brand name.
Final Words - Coffee Shop With Wifi
A coffee shop with free wifi will grab customers' attention more than a coffee shop without it. Customers will visit your coffee shop more often than before. They will find it more pleasing to enjoy their coffee while streaming their favorite videos. Also, it will also be beneficial for your business point of view. Repeated customers will increase your sales as a result your revenue will increase. You need to take precautionary measures before introducing free wifi. After taking care of all security measures you can introduce this service to the customers and enjoy its benefits.
