Article

Retailers: Customers need help at photo kiosks

Panelists at the "Winning Strategies in Self-Serve Photo Finishing" session at PMA offered opinions on the need for guidance through the self-serve experience.

February 17, 2004

LAS VEGAS -- "`Self-service' is a misnomer. It should be more like `self-assisted,'" said Steve Olock, director of digital imaging at Dan's Camera City Inc.

Olock was speaking about the concept of photo kiosks during a session at the 2004 Photo Marketing Association (PMA) International Annual Convention and Trade Show. Olock's position is that consumers often need lots of help to get through the process of printing out their digital photos on a kiosk. He was not alone.

All three of the panelists in the "Winning Strategies in Self-Serve Photo Finishing" session at PMA offered their similar opinions on the need for guidance through the self-serve experience. Speaking during the session besides Olock were Brian Stone, program manager for Best Buy; and Mark Mohler, vice president of sales and operations for Click Camera in Miami, Ohio. Francie Mendelsohn, president of Summit Research, moderated the panel.

Mendelsohn looked out at the audience of more than 500 people and said she was astonished by the attendance, especially when the show had not even kicked into gear. "I think this shows the interest in a very hot market."

Mendelsohn opened the session with comments about the quandaries retailers are in regarding self-service technology.

"I've observed consumers going to a station and spending 20 minutes fine-tuning one, 29-cent 4x7 print, only to bail at the end. And not only has that customer been lost, at least one other person is disgusted from having waited so long."

She said that store personnel will often offer assistance to customers trying the photo kiosks, but that management often frowns upon this because that is not the clerk's job.

Offering the Best Buy

Stone said in his presentation that Best Buy is at "ground zero" in terms of offering self-serve photo finishing at its more than 600 stores.

"We're not good at selling services. We're good at selling boxes." But the fact is that Best Buy sells one in five digital cameras sold in the United States, so the company is well-positioned to offer consumers more than a camera.

"Consumers ask us, `well, now how do I get the prints.' We are in a position to educate them and help them," said Stone. He explained that it is dangerous for Best Buy to hand off that photo-finishing service to another vendor.

So the giant retailer is testing kiosks in Minneapolis and Phoenix. The trial started in June. Customers use the kiosks to place orders sent to minilabs for next-day pickup.

The acceptance so far, Stone admitted, has been mixed. "The kiosks are up sometimes, and down more often than I'd like to say. We have paper out sometimes, paper jams other times. It is requiring a higher level of retailer participation than we'd like."

He called the term "self-service" an oxymoron because customers need a lot of help, and said that photo-printing kiosks cannot drive enough traffic on their own.

Still, he concluded, Best Buy is bullish on photo finishing as a service, and is trying to pin down the business model.

Slick Click

Mohler told the crowd that 17 percent of the digital prints Click Camera sells are processed either on photo kiosks or online. The company groups the two finishing methods together.

He said it is important to offer the kiosks because customers like options. Click has digital islands set up in the store. "We keep things contained so employees can readily help." He, too, said customers do not want to help themselves just yet.

Over the holidays, Click hired college students and trained them on the kiosks. Helping self-serve customers was their only role. "We called them the kiosks kids," said Mohler.

"As simple as we make the interfaces, customers are still bewildered. We assume that customers are computer literate. But they demand help."

And Mohler is happy to give it. "We are a specialty dealer. And we are willing to hold people's hands because we are building relationships."

He reasoned that customers will return to the place where they learned something new, even when they become comfortable with the technology.

Click is trying to grow its self-serve business by placing branded kiosks in dry cleaners, college unions, bookstores, cafes and pharmacies.

"We will pop machines into their stores and share the revenue stream. It's profit without the overhead," Mohler said. He noted that Click will be aggressive with this business model in 2004.

"It's critical to grab customers and build those relationships now."

Doing it Dan's Way

Olock said Dan's Camera City is a single retail store that has branded kiosks in 16 remote sites, including florists, pack and ship outlets, hospitals and drugstores.

He said his company uses the term "digital print station." "We never say the word `kiosk' because of the negative connotation."

Dan's has six units it the main store, and there is almost never a wait. Olock said the stations offer a perfect opportunity for upselling. "Our assistants will say, `that sunset print would look beautiful as an 8x10. And look at this frame.'"

Each photo station has a long wooden signs that show a question mark on one side and "OK" on the other. The customer can spin the sign around to signal that he or she needs help. "Now they know how to capture my attention without leaving the kiosk or screaming across the room," said Olock.

Q&A

During the question-and-answer session, the panelists agreed that camera phones hold promise as a new market for digital processing - but that they are far off as a revenue stream.

Mohler said, "I can see the day when someone takes a picture at a soccer game with a camera phone, uses the phone to dial my store, and then picks the print up from one of my kiosks on the way home."

But Olock said, "There is a lot of noise about camera phones, people want to know if we have the capability of processing those prints, but nobody is coming in with them yet."