Follow up to “Café Owners Get It Wrong about Wi-Fi and Turn Away Good Customers”

Craig Plunkett responded to my earlier post about how café owners who turn off their wi-fi to get rid of squatters are hurting their business by alienating their good customers.

This is a really good conversation, and I’m glad that Craig has engaged in it publicly. He’s not wrong by any means. He actually gets it, and even has one solution: use his company UrbanHotspots to help you figure it out.

There isn’t one “magical” way to properly offer free wi-fi (or even pay wi-fi, but I think all public wi-fi should be free, so I’ll just ignore the other kind for now). Just as there are many different types of cafés and many different types of other food stores, there are many ways you can engage your customer to encourage them to purchase more food and not just camp out.

You can go the overt way, and offer limited time coupons for free wi-fi, which Craig’s company can help you set up.

But its always been my experience that such solutions are too abrupt. They are like giving a lollipop to a child when they’ve been good and then taking it away after a few licks and telling them they can have it back when they have been good some more.

More subtle solutions tend to work better, when you play on people’s emotions and good will, and make it easy for them to do the right thing. Align your customers interests with yours and they will do the right thing without you having to beat them over the head about it.

This is not a new concept. Cafés have been offering free live music for many years. The good cafés learn how to build community and a following of good customers by offering free music instead of just having customers stake out a seat and camp out for the night.

Be creative. Be innovative. Sponsor co-working sessions, where you have a bunch of regulars that come in on your off hours. If any of them make it big, they’ll give you a piece of the payout for your support as they struggled. Reach out to moms or nannies who like to hang out together during the cafés quiet time with the children they are watching while surfing MySpace of Facebook.

Even in the middle of midtown there are lots of times that a café isn’t busy, and there are lots of people who want to be there when few others are.

And if all else fails, ask your customers politely to move during rush hour. At least then you can connect with them and tell them how much you appreciate their business.

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