EDMONTON, Alberta, May 09, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Visionstate™ Corp. (TSX VENTURE:VIS) is pleased to share one of our many customer success stories, also available on our website at www.visionstate.com.
An elevated customer experience at CrossIron Mills Shopping Centre, created by WANDA™ technology
Use of smart technology helps Calgary’s top mall excel at customer experience
With panoramic view of the Canadian Rockies and more than 220 stores including 17 large-format anchor stores, CrossIron Mills is among the crown jewels of shopping centre properties in the Ivanhoé Cambridge portfolio.
Located just north of Calgary, CrossIron Mills is a shopping and entertainment destination that was the first of its kind in Western Canada when it opened in 2009. With high ceilings, themed shopping districts, and a blend of high end retailers and quality entertainment, have all contributed to the success of CrossIron Mills as the dominant mall in Calgary.
For shopping centre developer Ivanhoé Cambridge, CrossIron Mills was as much about the customer experience as it was about retail offerings. As a high-end property, the mall’s customer experience was extremely high on the list of priorities for management, who were determined to differentiate the shopping centre as a unique experience in the region. As a result of their focus on customer satisfaction, CrossIron Mills has an exciting and unique retail offering and has become a primary destination for millions of patrons.
To achieve a new standard in customer experience, Ivanhoé Cambridge was in need of unique technologies that would differentiate them from competitors and help them succeed in elevating the experience at CrossIron Mills. The highly-trafficked public washroom areas were identified by the CrossIron team as an area that required high cleanliness standards and determined them to be an excellent opportunity to improve experience. CrossIron Mills then reached out to Visionstate to become one of the very first WANDA installation locations.
To be sure, clean washrooms lead to happier customers and fewer customer complaints. But CrossIron Mills management understood that clean washroom facilities also demonstrate to patrons the company’s dedication to all aspects of the customer service experience. Positive restroom experiences have a direct impact on customer perceptions of the entire facility, which directly influence overall consumer spending.
“The inherent correlation between restroom conditions, businesses and customers extends even deeper than we realized,” says Jon Dommisse, director of strategy and product development for Bradley Corporation, whose annual survey queried 1,035 adults. “Our survey has previously highlighted how well-maintained restrooms increase patronage; learning that people also reward these businesses with their spending power was further confirmation of how consumers respond positively to clean restrooms.” [1]
WANDA, a restroom management system developed by Visionstate Inc., ensures effective cleaning and maintenance of public restrooms. CrossIron Mills opted to have 17-inch WANDA units inset into the wall at the entrance to each washroom area to monitor customer traffic, as well as cleaning and maintenance activities in real time as they were performed by staff.
Along with demonstrating their commitment to restroom cleanliness by introducing WANDA, the CrossIron Mills management team also found that using the technology led to increased accountability and efficiency in the cleaning process.
“WANDA has proven to be extremely valuable for CrossIron Mills in being able to track and monitor activities related to washroom cleaning,” says CrossIron Mills Operations Manager, Ross McAlpine. “The staff learned the system quickly and WANDA is now providing us with data that we never had before. We are very impressed with the technology and with Visionstate’s support.”
Among the data collected were traffic volumes of customers moving through the restrooms. Using analytics provided by WANDA technology, CrossIron Mills learned that the busier restrooms were not receiving enough attention while less busy locations were attended to with equal frequency. Armed with customer traffic and maintenance information, CrossIron Mills management were able to quickly make adjustments to washroom cleaning schedules to attend to busier areas more frequently. They also utilized an important real-time feature in WANDA, which created an automatic alert once a threshold level was reached based on preset traffic volumes. This enabled maintenance to be deployed based on volume of washroom patrons, rather than on time. For example, traffic volumes could be preset so that once the 50th person entered the washroom an alert was sent in real-time through the WANDA system.
“We now use the heat mapping (in WANDA analytics) to show when our washrooms are most busy and then adjust the cleaning schedule to have the necessary staff to clean and maintain at the proper levels,” said James Moller, General Manager of CrossIron Mills.
CrossIron Mills is a busy shopping center with millions of visitors annually, and WANDA enabled them to quickly and effectively accumulate data about visitors to the washroom as well as data electronically collected about cleaning and maintenance activities. This digital audit trail can be critical information to have available in the event of a slip and fall injury inside a washroom. “One successfully defended lawsuit more than pays for the investment into WANDA,” says McAlpine.
In their quest for elevated customer experience, WANDA has been an integral part of CrossIron Mills' shopping center strategy and serves to distinguish Ivanhoé Cambridge as a company dedicated to positive customer experiences. “We love the Visionstate WANDA system because it makes us stand out from our competitors,” concludes Moller.
The improved efficiencies and better customer experience provided at CrossIron Mills has led the Ivanhoé Cambridge group to add WANDA technology to additional locations including Guildford Town Centre Shopping Centre in Surrey, BC and Bayshore Shopping Centre in Ottawa, ON.
About Visionstate Corp.
Visionstate Corp (TSX VENTURE:VIS) is a growth-oriented company that invests in the research and development of promising new technology in the realm of sustainability, analytics and the Internet of Everything. Visionstate provides investors access to holdings in disruptive technologies that include artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain platforms and cryptocurrency. Through Visionstate Inc. it helps businesses improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs and elevate customer satisfaction with its state of the art devices that track and monitor guest activities and requests. The footprint of its WANDA™ smart device now extends to hospitals, airports, shopping centres and other public facilities across North America. An extension of that product, CINDI™, has the potential to transform the guest service experience in the hotel industry. With the recent acquisition of Chatbot Incubator, specializing in applications for artificial intelligence, development is underway to make CINDI into a personal concierge, offering personalized services in every guest room. Through building up a collection of synergistic technologies, Visionstate Corp. will continue to innovate, reduce environmental impact and transform consumer experiences.
For more information please visit www.visionstate.com and follow @Visionstate on Twitter and Facebook.
Visionstate is listed on the TSX-V exchange under the ticker symbol "VIS”; additional investor information is available on SEDAR.
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For more information about Visionstate, please contact John Putters at (780) 425-9460 or jputters@visionstate.com.