Store Locator

Swift's "Nearest" Service Locator

The Swift "Nearest" telephone and web based Locator Service has been designed to allow callers to find their nearest store (or facility) of businesses with widely dispersed locations across the country.

Consider a typical case: A customer sees your advertisement in print or on TV, or hears it on the radio and decides that they are ready to purchase. How quickly can they find their nearest store?

Using technology to provide location information is effective because customers typically have similar questions like:

• Where can I see your products?
• Where are your stores or service centres?
• What is your phone number?
• When are the stores open?

Location technology saves you money answering these basic customer questions accurately and consistently whether offered automatically by phone, through a call-centre agent or via the web. In addition, feedback from the service may also help you answer business questions like:

• Where are our customers located or where should we provide service?
• How well did our special promotion in a particular area work?
• Which promotional medium/publication was most effective?

Any company with a geographic presence such as regional offices, retail outlets, partners, distribution or service centres can benefit from a Locator Service application. Typical examples of the types of business that have implemented a Locator Service include:

• Electronics Appliance company with multiple sales outlets and approved service agencies.
• Wine producer with stockists across Australia.
• Retail Sales Company with affiliated service outlets for loyalty rewards redemption.
• Photographic company with fixed and mobile photo studios.
• Health promotion organisation with varying monthly meeting venues and times.
• Banking group with distributed branch and ATM network.
• Retail chain with multiple brands, each with many sales outlets.

The effectiveness of a Locator Service is determined by the usefulness and consistency of the location information and the ease by which your end-users can access the information. Swift Call's long term experience with successful IVR implementations will ensure that you deliver the best possible service to your customers.

How it operates
Callers to a Telephone Locator Service are asked to enter their postcode using the buttons on the telephone. The Locator Service uses an accurate database of geographic centres of each postcode area to compute the nearest store locations. In the process a number of business rules can be applied to ensure that the caller receives the most relevant information. For example, rules might include:

• Only those locations within a certain geographic range, which could vary depending upon postcode area. (For callers from regional areas it may be satisfactory to provide store locations within 200km but for city suburbs 20km might be more appropriate).
• Only outlets that are open for business in the coming week.
• Only outlets marked as servicing the postcode area entered.

Once the nearest stores have been identified, the system can provide the caller with details such as:

• The street address
• Approximate distance away
• Opening hours
• Telephone number
• Services offered.

The information spoken by an IVR system or displayed on a web page will depend upon your business requirements.

Operating 24 hours per day, this service can act as an invaluable backup to promotional advertising for short term or long term campaigns.

Setup Options
Swift Call offers two system purchase options:

• A centrally managed IVR/Web Locator Service hosted by Swift Call
• A stand-alone IVR System installed at your premises.

By hosting this service Swift Call is able to offer you a low cost way to provide location based services as part of your store and product promotional strategies. Benefits of a hosted Locator Service include:

• No need to establish a dedicated IVR or Web site with the attendant capital and running costs.
• Provision of full Swift Call IVR/Web capacity on Service allowing for large peaks in demand.
• No risk of aging hardware needing to be maintained and replaced. Swift Call will cover any future technology upgrades required.
• Simple pricing model identifies and charges on actual usage.

Alternatively, the telephone based locator service (established as a stand-alone IVR system) installed in your own premises, can operate in conjunction with your call-centre. In this case Swift Call offers a telephonist module that complements the automatic IVR service sharing access to common databases for store locations and schedules.

It is also possible to provide access to the Swift Locator Service through the Internet and have this integrated into your company's website. In this case the Internet and IVR service share access to a common store location database and set of business rules, minimising the system maintenance requirements for the two independent services.

Although the service uses postcodes, Swift Call offers this service for New Zealand based callers where postcodes are not commonly used. In this case the service works by asking for the caller's telephone number (or detecting it via CLI).