Article

Where is the retail operating system?

With the exception of self-checkout, retailers do not have an operating system standard that will allow them to take special orders from a kiosk in a store, then, run the transaction through a cash register. According to Jack Picker, that needs to change.

July 4, 2004 by

Jack Picker, indendent retail kiosk consultant,the xplorion company

KioskCom 2004 was a very powerful display of what the kiosk industry can do for the masses. It was impressive to see the growth of vendors from last year to this. I learned a lot about specific products and solutions because I was fortunate enough to be an event judge, so I got a look see without being interrupted before the show opened.

Even better, I had 3 client walk-throughs and interacted with many of the vendors. This gave me a deeper understanding of solutions in real life requirements.

My guests were not only exhibit centric, but also attended some of the break out seminars. The professionalism of our exhibitors and presenters was duly noted.

As you would know from previous articles, I am a retailer. At the end of the day I only want to know that every customer I had contact with was a buying customer, not a tire kicker. So, this article is going to move in that direction.

Photo kiosks are still evolving - what we see today is a far cry from the original. Today they provide more services, are faster and extremely customer friendly. As an evolutionary step, a promotional coupon for future photo processing and photo related products should be printed as part of the thermal receipting process. This would add some additional traffic and sales to the store in which the kiosk is located.

Food ordering kiosks for Sheetz and Subway sandwich shops should make it clear that a transactional kiosk can be delivered for a fair price. The worldwide opportunity is exponential. McDonald's (http://www.kioskmarketplace.com/news_story_19604.htm) was cited in an article that one of its St. Louis franchisees replaced 3 ordering stations with one traditional station and 4 stand alone computers (kiosk).

The upside is that the customer gets a consistent message, human interaction tends to miss the up sell. Although the word "supersize" has been removed from the McDonald's vernacular - the kiosk will ensure that you buy fries and a drink - and will bundle it into a meal if the combination is correct - the customer should get the best price available for his order. Pay by credit card at the kiosk or pay by cash at the express pick up counter.

Whatever the cost, there is an economic advantage in increasing traffic flow and decreasing labor costs.

The brave, stand alone department store retailer, came all the way from Koln, Germany. Stuck on the back wall, I am not sure that they got their fair share of foot traffic.

Kaufhof Department Stores has embarked on the complete customer loyalty kiosk solution. They have deployed kiosks throughout their stores with the opportunity to grab customer sales for out of stock products in several key areas. Music seems to be the largest product category. Not unlike Macy's, Kohl's et al., Kaufhof has gone steps further.

In most large footprint stores, we see gift registry, human resource and price scanners. We don't see a kiosk that gives the customer access to the inventory or the dot.com site, builds customer loyalty or drop shop capabilities. I am critical about this issue and continue to be "at sea" on why, at least, these retailers don't have a dot.com connection for customer support in their stores. I can't urge more strongly the use of these terminals at a time when customer service and cashiers seem to be sparse or non-existent at many locations.

And why can't a customer check stock in a local store or other branches for that matter?
Here's my story and I am sticking with it. With the exception of self-checkout, retailers do not have an operating system standard that will allow them to take special orders from a kiosk in a store, then, run the transaction through a cash register.

Yes, you can use a credit card at the terminal, but you can't pay by cash or check. If a retailer diversifies product beyond its 4 walls, a drop ship program becomes extremely attractive to building customer loyalty. Now you have to figure out a way to communicate from the kiosk to the cash register system.

IBM, NCR and Microsoft are developing retail solutions. But, at the end of the day, retailers are still only at the technology edge of their IT strength. As long as retailers do not have an industry standard solution, they will continue to build their kiosk programs at their own growth pace. If the kiosk software developers can build an accepted and standardized "retail kiosk user interface", we may be able to deliver more kiosks to more end caps in more stores.

Jack Picker is an independent retail kiosk consultant specializing in planning, project management, implementation and deployment for real time web hosted kiosk initiatives. Jack's organization, the xplorion company can be found atwww.xplorion.com.