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The benefit of bill-payment kiosks

Bill-payment kiosks can provide great benefits to retail customers, as long as you keep the basics of availability, security and customer experience in mind.

March 7, 2016 by Kiosk Marketplace

You have put it off for weeks, but now your electric bill has snuck up on you, and you have only one day before your power is cut off. You run down to pay your bill, only to find a ridiculously long line that will take far too long. Thankfully, you remember there is a bill-payment kiosk at a retailer nearby, which will allow you get that bill paid off in no time. However, in order for end-users to benefit from the bill-payment kiosk, there are a few things the manufacturer needs to keep in mind.

The first element to keep in mind is availability. According to Adrian Benz, team leader of marketing communication for Hengstler GmbH, your kiosk should be available 24/7. "The trend within the industry is toward self-service machines that provide the customer with 24/7 service and availability," Benz said. There are a couple of ways to accommodate this feature, such as placing your kiosk outdoors or placing it in a 24/7 retailer.

Next, you need to consider user security, since bill-payment kiosks deal with sensitive information. "At a minimum, this means your kiosk needs to meet EMV standards. Bill-payment kiosks need to have an EMV-certified payment system. This means that the data is encrypted from the moment the card is entered, through the kiosk, the gateway, the processor, and the vendor," said Laura Miller, director of marketing, KioWare Software. In addition, you also need to keep your software and hardware up to date to close security loopholes.

One way to keep your kiosk secure is to use kiosk software to lock down the kiosk and prevent hackers from messing with sensitive data. "Kiosks need to be secured with kiosk software if they are going to be handling sensitive information, particularly of a financial nature. Anything else is a poor substitute that can put users and organizations at risk for data theft or leakage," Miller said. "Kiosk software is built exactly for this purpose, with file download blocking, browser lockdown, clearing of private data, resetting the browser between users, and EMV-supported payment encryption to secure payment data."

The most important element to making your kiosk beneficial to customers is to ensure a good customer experience. In previous articles, we discussed certain elements that hurt customer experience, from inaccurate touchscreens to unfriendly graphical-user-interfaces. On a more basic level, you need to ensure your kiosk is operational and isn't having constant outages. "The customer will go to the kiosk once. If it's down, they'll come back a second time. If it's down a second time, they won't come back again," Benz said.

One way you can improve customer experience is to have a reliable printer. According to Benz, giving the customer a receipt is not optional, since most customers want the receipt for proof that they paid their bill. If your kiosk is outside, you will need a printer that can operate in extreme temperatures. You should also consider if your kiosk can accommodate large paper rolls and high printing speeds. You can also have an option that the user can select to receive a copy of their receipt sent to their email address.

Another tactic to improve the customer experience is to get the retailer deploying the kiosk involved in the process. "Kiosks are used to improve customer satisfaction or to improve staff productivity and reduce operating costs, so during the development process retailers must do all they can to optimize the user friendliness, reliability and total cost of ownership of their kiosks," Benz said.

When deployed correctly, bill-payment kiosks can be an ideal self-service solution. They allow customers to get an unpleasant task done quickly, without having to deal with long lines or employees. However, in order for retailers and manufacturers alike to craft a good customer experience, they need to make sure their kiosks are reliable, available, secure and easy to use.

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