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KioskCom: Achieving ROI through customer-engagement tech

KioskCom Self Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show in Las Vegas this year put the focus squarely on taking the next step in educating deployers of kiosks, digital signage and other consumer-engagement technologies.

February 14, 2010 by

The educational sessions, workshops and featured activities at KioskCom Self Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show in Las Vegas this year put the focus squarely on taking the next step in educating deployers of kiosks, digital signage and other consumer-engagement technologies.

All of these things are coming together to reinforce the show's new focus, on customer engagement through technology, says show general manager Lawrence Dvorchik.

"People now are very comfortable with do-it-yourself, self-service technologies," he said. "They're very comfortable with digital technologies, and it's become much more of a focus on how to achieve your ROI in your customer engagement strategies than it is about how the technologies work themselves and why they need to be there, because people get it now."

Deployers, operators and venues alike already have been educated on the value of kiosks and digital customer engagement technologies, Dvorchik says, but now it's time to work on how best to use them.

"People seem to understand the value of self-service, of communication through digital technology; that's been established. What they don't know is how to properly engage customers and achieve their ROI through these and other technologies," he said. "People are no longer saying, ‘Oh my god, a kiosk.' They're now saying, ‘Wow, a kiosk. I know how to use that. That's what we want.' Even the people who hate it at least understand it. As a whole the industry has done well educating the world in the value of utilizing the technology and why customers demand it now, but we still haven't solved the problem of how to achieve your ROI through this."

And KioskCom and The Digital Signage Show is where the problem solving starts, Dvorchik says.

In addition to a full slate of educational sessions dedicated to topics like "Using Customer Facing Technologies to Improve Operational Efficiencies" and "Understanding how Customer Facing Technologies Impact the Path-to-Purchase," the expo is highlighted by two pre-show workshops, informational kiosk and digital signage tours and a variety of featured activities like the Self-Service Excellence Awards.

The accelerated three-hour "how-to" training program will offer practical, real-world perspectives, templates and information, taking attendees in-depth to understand all aspects of deploying digital signage, along with take-away guides, structures and templates. (This event requires a separate registration and fee. To register, go here.)

That will be followed by the fourth annual Customer Engagement Technology Summit, which is open only to those with experience in deploying customer engagement technology programs like digital signage, kiosks or mobile application, or other customer facing technologies. (For information on attending, call 203-371-6322, or email info@jdevents.com.)

The workshop and think tank, led by Self-Service and Kiosk Association president Janet Webster and interactive media and merchandising expert Paul Flanigan, "is reserved for buyers only – allowing attendees an opportunity to openly discuss the pressing customer engagement issues and concerns you face, in a non-threatening environment," according to the KioskCom Web site.

The Self-Service Excellence Awards, honoring the best self-service deployments of the last year, will take place at 4 p.m. on the show's first day, the 14th, in the keynote room of the exhibit hall.

The expo's grand opening reception will start right after the awards end, at about 4:40 p.m., on the exhibit hall floor.

Last year's best-of award winner, the Library of Congress, represented by COO Jo Ann Jenkins, will deliver a special keynote presentation at 9 a.m. the next day, the 15th.　Jenkins will provide an in-depth discussion of the Library of Congress Experience (LCE) program, which was launched to give library visitors unprecedented access to its collections via unique on-site exhibitions integrated with cutting-edge technologies.　 Cooking up Content will be a two-day series, with a session on the 14th and two on the 15th, of demos providing venues, brands, network operators and other interested attendees an inside view of the content creation process, from strategy to creative to deployment of content for Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) networks.　 　

Throughout the expo, organizers also will be offering the "Kiosk and Self-Service Expert Tours" and the "Digital Signage Connection Tours," Dvorchik says. Each approximately 45-minute-long tour will focus on a different facet of successful kiosk or digital signage deployments.

"We've changed the way the conference and the educational program is formatted, so it is no longer focused on kiosks or digital signage," Dvorchik said. "It's focused on customer engagement, business strategies, digital out-of-home, IT and technology and operations logistics and maintenance. So the focus is heavily on customer engagement and how you utilize these technologies to engage the customer leading to whatever ROI you've set out."

For more on the full lineup of content, go to the KioskCom Web site here.