Social Messaging App, ChatPal, Releases New Feature Aimed to Promote Social Distancing in Retail

Bellaire, TX, April 16, 2020 --(PR.com)-- The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose several challenges in our daily lives. Grocery stores and chains are not only having to deal with reduced foot traffic because of social distancing guidelines but also with the safety of their employees and customers in the wake COVID-19 cases at locations across the country. This environment is forcing retail businesses to urgently seek out creative ways to serve their customers while staying compliant with federal and state social distancing guidelines. Some retail chains have implemented new policies and measures to ensure a “contactless service mode” to keep their employees and customers safe.

A free, unique, and emerging social networking app, ChatPal, appears to have messaging features that could help alleviate many of the concerns that retail businesses face in this new world of social distancing. Designed to enable messaging within your immediate vicinity (300 feet or so) or hyper-local messaging as this form of communication is coming to be known as, ChatPal allows you to communicate with any user without having to divulge your phone number or any other private handles, ideal in a situation where you need to communicate quickly with a store’s service associates whenever a need arises.

A particularly useful feature on ChatPal that is appealing in a retail environment is its “teams” or “tags” feature. An organization can tag fellow team members or service associates and activate tags at a desired geo location, for example at a specific store location. ChatPal users can then immediately interact with tagged team members of a store or a business for instant messaging communication and better, quicker service, all without having to go physically look for an associate and while maintaining appropriate social distancing. Not only can other users or customers interact with a service associate at a store or business in this manner, but also the store can use this medium to communicate with every customer/user within the store on the ChatPal platform. And the neat part is that the moment a customer leaves that store, they and the store/service team members disappear from each other’s radar. For teams and businesses, this app is fundamentally a new way to enhance communication and service to their customers.

“ChatPal can turn every building, shopping mall, retail store, restaurant, classroom, bar, or coffee shop into a hyper-local messaging environment and enables communications that was not possible before,” said Rajesh Chelapurath, Founder, ChatPal, “This app allows for people to better engage and connect with the community immediately around them, i.e. at the hyper-local level, without the need to sacrifice privacy. It is fundamentally about translating real world interactions into the digital realm.”

As the world comes to grips with COVID-19 and its consequences, it may pay to be cautious and use technology to maximize social distancing in all types of situations, every possible avenue could prove useful to prevent its malicious spread across our country and the globe. Next time you have a question while shopping and need to talk to a service associate, consider hyper-local messaging apps such as ChatPal and take social distancing to the last few feet.