Wawa, Create a More Holistic Loss Prevention and Control System with Video Intelligence
Spectacularly. Simple. Solutions.
These are the three words that immediately come to mind when it comes to Wawa. We at Wobot.ai love that the chain has always worked on simplifying its customers’ lives through technology – be it through self-serve kiosks or by offering special discounts and incentives through mobile apps.
Let’s explore further to learn more about Wawa’s challenges and how adding the right technology can streamline the brand’s operations for success.
Delivering Solutions to The Top Challenges Wawa is Facing
Employee safety
For any convenience store, employees are core assets. However, it is estimated that a retail store loses 30 days of work per employee for every injured employee, causing the employers to lose roughly $225.8 billion a year, as per CDC.
It’s not a cakewalk to balance well-stocked shelves and move materials around at a convenience store. Mistakes are inevitable, with very little time to learn effective methods. These mistakes put the teams’ and customers’ health at stake.
In the end, accidents at the workplace and injured employees always cost a convenience store more than the intermittent expenditures to ensure a safer and hospitable environment for the employee and customers alike.
Solution
Intelligent retail stores check what’s going around at their stores. Video intelligence gives you a hub to manage and control your operations from a single software for all stores. Wobot.ai, as a video intelligence provider, has helped many operators with its AI checklists.
AI checklists make it easier for you to automate tasks and deliver real-time insights if any violation has occurred or prevent an accident before it happens. In addition, a continuous feedback system allows stores to stay at the top of their operations.
Theft and burglary
It’s tough to operate a gas station convenience store that has taken years to build a position and reputation without expecting any case of theft or burglary. However, Wawa announced in 2020 that approximately 850 stores and gas stations had malware in payment processors, which compromised the credit/debit cards of customers.
Inga Goddijn, a reporter in the Risk-Based Security, said: “Whether it’s a phishing campaign that ultimately provides malicious actors with a toehold into systems or misconfigured databases and services that leave millions of sensitive records freely available on the internet, it seems to be human nature coupled with weak controls that contributed heavily to the number and severity of breaches we’ve seen this year.”
However, the core finding of this case was user gullibility. Hackers don’t necessarily attack computers; they attack user gullibility. It gets easy for attackers to send ‘phishing’ emails that employees are prone to open and download malware accidentally.
Under the busy roofs of Wawa lies a hole in the effectiveness of employee training. Consider the following statistics.
- An average dishonest employee steals $1,900.
- Nearly one-third of internal thefts in retail stores go undetected for five years.
- New workers working with corrupt staff are likely to become habitual thieves.
Solution
Point-of-sale is the closest point a store can detect and prevent internal thefts and customer frauds before they happen. In addition, Wobot.ai allows easy integration with your POS systems using integrators like PAR and Omnivore.
It’s chaotic and ineffective to go back to transaction history and deploy manual efforts to detect suspicious activities. After integrating the store’s POS data, managers can get real-time feedback on their transaction data to better manage thefts and burglaries.
Video proof is a vital asset for a brand. For every attempted theft, an owner can present the associated video proof with the date and time to discourage dishonest actions on the employees’ end.
Order accuracy and speed
Order accuracy across the retail and restaurant industry is the number one reason customers do repeat business. However, even though Wawa holds a reputation for excellent customer experience, a lot has changed over two years.
In the last two years, employee turnover has spiked to 16.2% for retail stores, as per a LinkedIn study. A high turnover rate implies new hires who require training to hand over goods from the counter accurately and conveniently.
Besides, as retail stores become more e-commerce-driven, order accuracy matters more than ever – as it will be inevitably frustrating for a customer to receive an inaccurate online order, which takes time, money, and energy to deliver. So, it’s a loss on both ends.
With a high employee turnover rate, it is also challenging for Wawa and other convenience stores to tackle longer queues, leading to increased wait times. Most customers don’t like waiting more than 10 minutes to close the order and exit the store. So, they are naturally bound to gravitate towards stores where they get their orders quickly and conveniently.
Solution
Video intelligence quickly solves the problem of training new hires. Wobot.ai provides a smooth feature where owners can go back to old video data and train employees on how tasks are supposed to be done.
Video analytics allows owners to study and understand peak times at their stores, enabling them to strategically deploy staff in critical areas to ensure a seamless store experience.
Getting insights in real-time, for example, every time a queue length exceeds more than five customers. Merely knowing this can help operators reward patient customers with a gift or coupon for their patience, leading to more loyalty.
To cap it up
Almost every store throughout the U.S. uses CCTV cameras for simple video surveillance. However, CCTV cameras can be a significant part of the workforce if one adds intelligence (AI) to them – to solve the most critical business issues.
Wobot.ai acts as the bridge to a more holistic loss prevention and control strategy. CCTV cameras are the most underutilized assets and can help clients significantly improve their efficiency and revenue for every dollar that is spent.
If you like the information you read and want to learn more about Wobot.ai, book a meeting right here. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
If you like the information you read and want to learn more about Wobot.ai, book a meeting right here. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.