Good design thinking equals happier customers
Have you ever thought how much design thinking can be seen in high-traffic places like in shops or shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and offices? What kind of things will make the visits – shorter or longer – experimental or just easier?
If you think about IKEA, those stores include a lot of design – not only in furniture but also in the layout and functions. The stores have been designed in a way that visitors spend a lot of time making purchases. So, time spend at the store often means more purchases as well.
Ingvar Kamprad noticed decades ago that people are shopping more if the cafes are located in the middle of the stores so that it is easy for people to stop by in a cafeteria and have a cup of coffee or lunch before continuing their trip in the store. This was based on his strong believe that shopping hungry is not fun at all.
IKEA has also noticed another important thing – availability of toilets. When people can easily visit a toilet and fulfill their basic needs, it will be much more fun for them to continue to do their shopping. Then they do not need to hurry back home.
The sites must always lead people to desired actions. Places, where people are working -in the factories, offices, hospitals and shops – must support the work; efficiency, creativeness, safety and smiling service. In many of those places it’s company’s advantage if workers or customers want to stay there long. Traders take care of nice looking shops, advertisements, placement of the products and yup – the toilets.
We are talking just about this when we are talking about Lindström FlowAbility Washroom. Everyday superheroes – me and you – can concentrate on the core things; working, shopping or just spending time in the site. In practice, it means that with Lindström service the toilet is always clean (no waste from hand drying) and people take care of their hand hygiene. Premise owner or cleaning company doesn’t need to check during the day is there toilet paper or hand towel available. Those smart dispensers tell to the owner when he/she has to fulfill those.
Our target is to add smartness to all our customer’s cotton towel dispensers in coming two years. IoT (internet of things) network might be the widest in Finland – even in Europe due to the current amount of dispensers (yup – we will add those sensors afterwards to the existing dispensers). If someday all Finns would add sensors to their existing fridges and those will tell you when the food runs out the IoT network will be wider.
Time has come to launch great service where all end users in Finland (sooner or later also abroad) can be part of huge IoT – network. Currently we are offering 320 million hand dryings yearly with the re-usable cotton towels (most ecological way)! Yup – we call it FlowAbility.
Let’s build it together,
Satu
