What Is Managed WiFi? And Does It Prevent Bad Reviews?

It’s not just teenagers with an abundance of spare time we see glued to their phones any more –  it’s men and women from all walks of life.

Whether it’s parents checking the latest updates on Facebook, business people checking emails or sports fans checking the news… the modern-day human has developed the true reliance on the internet.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for the debate. But one fact nobody is debating is that we’re only going to rely more on the internet as the years go by.

And it’s quickly becoming an accepted norm that businesses with a strong customer-service element offer free WiFi at their premises. Which is why most hotels, events, restaurants, schools, holiday parks, venues and even small coffee shops in the UK now offer free guest WiFi for their customers.

But Don’t Make The Mistake Others Made

Some businesses have been known to share their own internet with the public. This is extremely risky, as sharing your company’s personal WiFi network leaves you vulnerable to hackers, malware, severe fraud and has left many business owners wishing they never started. 

Even if you’re confident your customers would never do anything malicious, and you’re confident they’ve never accidentally stored malware on their device from opening a spam email –  you’re still letting them use your data. Which slows down your internet speeds, making it a bad experience for both your customers and staff.

And what’s more, you’ll also have various “WiFi deadzones” throughout your premises, which means your WiFi won’t cover every location your customer tries to use it from – and there’s few things more frustrating than buffering.

And if you think that’s an overstatement, just take a look through some of these bad reviews customers left businesses for their bad guest WiFi alone:

Bad WiFi Equals Bad Reviews

Having a less than ideal WiFi connection is rarely received well by the public, as you can see from the reviews we found above. Which is why businesses like yours need a managed WiFi solution.

What Is Managed WiFi?

Managed WiFi is the professional design, installation, monitoring and support of a WiFi system by a specialist company. It’s everything your business needs to offer safe WiFi to the public, without driving them up the wall with: broken login screens, horrendously slow speeds during peak hours or poor coverage.

A fully managed WiFi service is far from the typical business internet installation you may have received elsewhere. 

It involves sending an actual WiFi expert to your premises to conduct several tests to your network. These include “passive” and “active” WiFi surveys, which identifies any instances of packet loss, potential sources of interference, data requirements, WiFi dead zones and more. 

The information collected during the site surveys is then used in the planning, design and installation stage to ensure your new WiFi system will satisfy all customers and staff throughout your entire business premises.

A fully managed WiFi package also comes with 24/7 support and monitoring, which prevents problems occurring and gets any unforeseen issues fixed fast.

Plus, you’ll also be able to use your WiFi to grow your business by legally collecting GDPR-friendly customer data.

You’ll have your own WiFi login page, with your own branding, where customers visit to access your WiFi. After logging in, your customers can be redirected to your website, Facebook page, Twitter or anywhere else. They can even be prompted to leave a positive review, and you’ll be able to send them targeted advertisements in the future.

And the best part? An experienced managed WiFi company can set this up in a way that doesn’t frustrate your customers in the slightest.

The Key To Growing Your Business With Managed WiFi

We’ve helped hundreds of businesses throughout the past 20 + years, often stepping in to help companies who had their WiFi set up wrong by a less experienced company.

This has allowed us to learn from their mistakes and understand exactly how to set up your WiFi for maximum success.

The biggest mistake companies make is forcing customers to do something they don’t want to do. For example, when WiFi companies force your customers to leave a review before logging in, you’ll certainly receive a lot of reviews – but many of them will be negative. 

People will always resent being forced into things, and although the stats on using these tactics can look good on the surface – they ultimately do more harm to your business than good.

We’ve found that you’re far better off making it very easy for customers to do what you want them to do. Whether that’s: leave a review, like your Facebook page or anything else – as you’re perceived as a giver. This uses the social law of reciprocity, making them more likely to do what you’re asking (and more importantly, feel good about doing it).

You’ll Also Learn How To Improve Customer Satisfaction

One of the other major benefits you get when using our managed WiFi services is a true understanding of what your customers want and how to make your business more profitable.

You’ll have accurate data on footfall, how long customers stay in your premises, which locations are most popular, your customers average age, what percentage of your customers are new customers and more.

Plus you’ll be able to measure the true effectiveness of any advertising campaign you may be running by comparing trends on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis.

We know how vitally important this information has been to the growth of many of our existing customers. And the accuracy of the data is often the difference between rapid growth or chronic stagnation.

That’s why we have our unique “no deadzones” policy – because even the smallest loss of analytics data through a poor WiFi signal will make it much harder for you to make an informed decision on your business.

In fact, if you find even the smallest area of your premises isn’t fully covered by your WFi – we will send out our technicians to your premises to fix the fault free of charge.

And that guarantee isn’t only for the first 30 days like it is elsewhere – it’s for as long as you use our managed WiFi services. 

Here’s What Braintree Town FC Said About Their Managed WiFi:

“We’re delighted we can now offer our supporters free Wi-Fi. Our supporters are highly dedicated and with many followers on Twitter alone, we had to ensure they could stay connected during and after the games. Having guest access in our clubhouse and functions rooms also ensures our meetings can run efficiently. The ability to track the usage of the Wi-Fi and offer a password protected corporate network is further testament to the great service APC Solutions has provided us with.”

And Here’s What CEM Days Said About Theirs:

“APC provided a Guest access WiFI solution for all of our car dealerships, customers can come into our showrooms and waiting areas and easily and securely connect up to superfast WiFi using the same infrastructure as the rest of the car dealership owing to the security features allowing the networks to be separated. The best bit about the whole project was that we could remove a WiFI controller from each dealership as this new solution is all cloud managed saving thousands in license costs compared to the previous hardware vendor.”

Braintree District Council Said This:

“We’re delighted with the new Wi-Fi solution which addresses all of our requirements. We needed to be able to offer visitors to the Town Hall free Wi-Fi, but we also needed our own encrypted network for internal use. The Town Hall regularly hosts events, is used as a wedding venue and features conference facilities all of which require access to Wi-Fi. Being able to offer Wi-Fi in to the function rooms where guests can log on for free is now an expected requirement of our guests and we couldn’t offer the Town Hall as a business venue without it!”

And You’ll Say Something Similar

We have helped hundreds of companies both big and small achieve their goals for over 20-years, which is why we can stay with full confidence that when you use our managed WiFi services, your biggest complaint will be that you didn’t start using us sooner!

If you’d like any free help or advice on the best managed WiFi package for your business, click on the button below, enter your contact details and we will get one of our WiFi specialist to contact you within the next working hour