The Measurement Minute

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

Ghosting, stitching and matrixing are the three big gotchas when you try to use people-counting cameras for more than door-counting. It’s true that people-counting video cameras are better than 99% accurate at door-counting applications – but that doesn’t mean they are 99% accurate at people tracking. Why not? It turns out the that the ML in people counting cameras is highly optimized for door-counting and often breaks in other situations. In this Measurement Minute, I describe the three biggest problems and their partial solutions.

 

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

Camera has been extremely successful as a people-counting technology and part of the reason is the variety of cameras available. Standard ceiling-mounted, stereoscopic video is the default camera technology – but there are a variety of situations where you might need or want to try something different. From Lidar to no-smarts video, here’s a quick run-down on camera technology options.

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

Camera is the most popular technology for people-counting. And with good reason. It’s highly accurate and very detailed. But while vendors have done a really nice job optimizing their IoT people-counting cameras for door-counting applications, they are often less ideal when trying to do more advanced journey measurement.

 

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

If store-side operational measurement is a huge miss – making it impossible to improve processes around things like curbside pickup – how do you get better? The Measurement Minute takes a look at the technologies most appropriate to the operational measurement of people-based processes. From 30fps video with ML to bluetooth badges to mobile apps, options for good process measurement do exist.

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

A lot of the worst aspects of the curbside pickup experience are driven by bad customer communications. But even with perfect communications, a thirty minute wait is still…a thirty minute wait. When operational processes don’t perform, customer experience is going to suffer – the only question is how much. But while improving customer communication is fairly easy, improving the underlying operational processes isn’t. And the problem starts with a fundamental fact: most people-based operational processes are completely unmeasured. Stores simply have no idea what Associates are doing.

 

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

A lot of bad curbside pickup experiences are caused by 2 basic mistakes: not having a busy-time/overflow strategy and misusing core technologies like VRUs. An experience can work fine during normal operations and then utterly break-down when things get busy. The Measurement Minute breaks down a terrible Home Depot experience and suggests a few simple changes that would make the experience infinitely better.

 

 

The Measurement Minute with Gary Angel

 

Covid-19 is creating massive disruption in consumer habits – creating opportunities to gain AND LOSE customer loyalty. If my curbside pickup experiences are any example (and I think they are), retailers are skewing heavily in the lose customer loyalty direction. It doesn’t have to be that way.

 

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

Covid is driving massive change in customer behavior and attitudes. Will it last? Nobody really knows. But every marketer knows that customer habits are hard to break. That’s why retention is easier than acquisition. Right now, businesses have extraordinary risk (obviously) but extraordinary opportunity as well. Delivering good experiences now will engender brand loyalty for years to come.

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

If you’re really good at measuring horse-racing, are you obligated to also measure horses? It doesn’t seem like it, but I find myself wishing that great sites like 538 devoted even a fraction of their analytic reporting to public policy instead of who’s winning.

 

 

 

The Measurement Minute by Gary Angel

 

Creating good testing ideas is a common roadblock to the successful use of analytics. Fortunately, at least when it comes to display measurement, building a structured testing program is ridiculously easy.