Deploying a kiosk is not as simple as placing one in the corner of a store with the hope that customers will use it. It is important to begin strategically planning for the deployment as soon as the idea develops. Months of planning and getting pointers from experienced deployers are just two of the things that will help make your future deployment successful. Many of these tidbits may seem obvious, but they are often taken for granted, sometimes by those who have years of self-service experience.
When filling out a job résumé template, some people skip over the part where the objective would be placed. But the objective portion is arguably one of the critical parts of a résumé, a part where employers can discover whether a potential employee might be successful in the work place.
The same can be said for the deployment of kiosks. Researching self-service technologies and understanding the pros and cons can be critical to a successful deployment.
It’s important to understand what experience you are trying to create for the business and the customer, said Brian Ardinger, vice president of business development at Nanonation, a provider of customer-experience software for kiosks and digital signage.
“The way you fail is by not measuring what you hope to accomplish before your deployment,” he said.
2) Make sure you have company-wide support
One of the worst things a company can do is to implement a kiosk at one of its stores without consulting the store manager and staff. To make a kiosk deployment successful, you have to have support from all parties involved within the company, said Bill Lynch, Source Technology’s vice president of self-service solutions.
One of the ways this can be accomplished is by appointing a project manager for each deployment, Lynch said. That person can lay out the company’s deployment vision for store-level employees and minimize confusion about the company’s goals for the project.
At the very least, send out a memo.
3) Find a good partner
For first-time deployers, it’s also important to have an honest assessment of your company’s capabilities. Many people find that kiosks require a wide range of knowledge and specialized hardware. Therefore, it is often better to bring in a partner, Lynch said.
“There are so many nuances to this business that you almost have to bring in a partner when deploying a kiosk,” he said.
You also want to make sure the partner has experience in the type of kiosk you plan to deploy, says Stephen Gregorie, vice president of customer experience and marketing at Pro-Tech Solutions, a self-service software and kiosk provider. His company, for instance, specializes in outdoor kiosks. He said a business once put an outdoor kiosk directly in the sunlight without realizing the toll that would take. Add in the wear and tear of people using the kiosk, and the business quickly had a “dead boat anchor” rather than a working kiosk.
It’s important to get a partner that understands your environment and will take care of maintenance and upkeep, Gregorie said. “That way you can focus on your business, rather than if the machine is going to work.”
4) Keep customers in mind
The customer is always right. This mantra needs to be a serious consideration when deploying a kiosk, Gregorie said.
“People are waking up to the fact that if you don’t cater to the customer, they will bolt,” he said.
Airports are usually crowded and noisy, so customers can often be irritated when they have to wait in long lines to check in to their flights. However, many airlines do very well at getting people in and out of the check-in kiosk lines, Gregorie said. That customer satisfaction breeds customer loyalty.
It is important to realize there are many types of customers and you need to understand their individual needs, Ardinger said.
“You need to ask yourself why they would want to interact with this machine,” he said.
5) Location matters
If the only spot you have in your business to put a kiosk is in an isolated corner, you may want to think twice about your deployment. It’s important to take a look at placement and the logistics of the kiosk before you let it loose, Ardinger said.
He said you need to look at the traffic flow, whether signage will be needed to draw attention to the machine, whether it will be a standalone kiosk or embedded in another device, and, finally, whether the machine will be easy to service based on its location.
Only after taking a hard look at those things will you be better able to judge whether you can deploy a kiosk effectively, Ardinger said.
“These are not the type of systems you can just go buy at Best Buy and plop them down into your store,” he said.
