KFC Australia has plans to extend its free Wi-Fi service to all stores around the country following a successful deployment to 190 restaurants in 2012.
According to the company, 45,000 sessions were recorded on the Aruba Networks Wi-Fi network over a month. These sessions consumed 1.7 million minutes of browsing and 139,197.35 MB of data transferred. Customers used smartphones, tablets and laptops to access the service.
KFC Australia enterprise systems manager Saqib Hussnain told Computerworld Australia that it doesn’t have a time line for the nationwide rollout as yet.
He explained that the service has been introduced to all company owned stores and is now being trialled by its franchisee groups.
“Once they [franchisees] are happy with the service, more stores will come online,” he said. “If we are doing a refit of an old store, this will also get free Wi-Fi.”
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According to Hussnain, the Wi-Fi service has enabled KFC Australia to promote targeted offers to customers while they browse the Internet.
“We sometimes promote coupons using the free Wi-Fi home page. Sales uplift for those coupons has been higher than stores that don’t have Wi-Fi,” he said.
“We also wanted to provide customers with a reason to come into KFC and hangout.”
The Aruba platform has the capability to deliver marketing through discount offers or video ads.
He said that in the “near future” cricket promotions will be sent out to customers. KFC Australia is a major sponsor of the T20 Big Bash League.
“So far we have been promoting static content rather than videos but we know the Aruba platform has the capability [for video].”
When customers access free Wi-Fi and complete a verification process for a specific device, they get sent an email confirming that they can use the service for an extended period of time.
Because the Wi-Fi platform links to a customer relationship management (CRM) system, marketing messages can be personalised.
According to Hussnain, Aruba’s ClearPass offering has allowed KFC to deliver a customised user experience. This includes a branded home page, security of terms and conditions upon launch and timed sessions with data limits. With one access point per store, ClearPass traffic is sent via the remote access point to a centralised Aruba controller which is scanned by KFC’s content filter.
In addition, KFC Australia implemented the vendor’s AirWave solution for centralised monitoring and reporting. The IT team can view the status of all remote access points and controllers.
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