News

8 steps to self-service success

April 3, 2005

So, you think your business is ready for a self-service installation. You think your customers - and your employees - are at a point where a kiosk can help meet everybody's needs, while improving your bottom line at the same time.

It's not hard to find evidence that kiosk solutions often do great things for businesses of every variety - walk through a mall or a department store and you'll see countless kiosks handling tasks from the mundane to the mission-critical. But what you don't see are all the installations that failed, all the machines that ended up wearing an out-of-order sign just days after their first use, and then were whisked away to a warehouse, leaving behind only a smaller balance in the company checkbook and an unhappy look on the owner's face as evidence they ever existed.

It doesn't have to be that way. With some careful planning, a kiosk can be a 100-percent positive experience for your business. Here, then, is a simple eight-step plan for choosing the right application for your company, and making it happen.

Step 1: Answer the basic questions

If you've arrived at the notion that you're ready for a kiosk, it's time to back up a step and ask yourself why. What do you hope to accomplish, and why do you think a self-service machine is the proper way to accomplish it?

According to Tim Kearns, director of marketing for Rhode Island, N.Y.-based kiosk hardware and software provider MontegoNet, this is a crucial step that is too easily overlooked. Indeed, when you've got the sizzle of a sleek new machine in front of you, it's easy to get swept up in the emotion of buying and not ask the right questions.

"Before getting into the nuts and bolts of kiosks, it is first important to step back and clearly define the goals of your intended project," he said. "Do you want to improve customer service, provide access to helpful information, automate a transaction, enhance your image or perhaps all of the above?"

The "all of the above" solution will be tempting to the ambitious, but it might not always be the wisest choice for a business approaching kiosks for the first time. According to Sylvia Berens, vice president of leading kiosk developer Apunix, it is often prudent to start small, with an eye toward future growth.

"A kiosk can be used to meet multiple goals," she said, "but it is usually helpful to start with a few key functions, and then add and grow as the project becomes successful."

So maybe your dream of an all-in-one gift registry/loyalty card/Internet access/employment kiosk is a bit too lofty at first. Pick the one or two applications that mean the most to you - and will generate the quickest return - and focus on those.

"Setting clear goals up front will allow you to formulate an effective strategy and increase the likelihood of a successful kiosk project," Kearns added.

Step 2: Do the research

Armed with a plan for what you hope to accomplish, it's time to figure out how you're going to do it. Careful research at the planning stage is often the difference between a store filled with attention-getting and productivity-enhancing kiosks, and a phalanx of darkened screens and out-of-order signs.

Cy Birg, chief kiosk expert with hardware manufacturer Affordable Kiosks, says it is important to ask the right questions at this stage. For instance, do you have an employee on staff who can handle the extra work the kiosk(s) will generate? If not, can you afford to hire one? What are the ongoing costs going to be - paper, ink, supplies, network charges - and have you budgeted for them?

Birg also names two key research areas that must be given some serious attention:

• Competitive analysis: Have your competitors tried kiosks? Which ones have worked and which ones haven't? Have their customers caught on and taken a liking to the machines, or do they largely sit unused?
• Demographics: Who are your customers, and will they want to use the machines? Birg gives an example of a Medicaid office: A payment-taking kiosk in such a location might not be a great idea, as an older clientele is more likely to want to give their payment to a real person. An internet kiosk in a youth-oriented entertainment venue, on the other hand, is a better fit.
• Kearns says that you should also give thought to your expectations for the project and how you will measure it. Will you be looking at the overall usage of the machines, the number of transactions, or the average revenue generated per sale? Decide what the machines will have to accomplish in order for you to consider them a success.

Step 3: Location, location, location

What's true for real estate is just as true for kiosks: location is crucial. The sharpest, slickest, most feature-packed kiosk network will do you absolutely no good if the units are placed in unintuitive, low-traffic, or hard-to-reach locations. "This is one area where a lot of retailers goof," Birg said. "The kiosks have to be visible to all flows of traffic within an environment."

You might think that the answer is always to place kiosks in high-traffic areas. And while this is true in many cases, there are times when traffic is not the sole determiner of placement. For instance, if your kiosk will take employment applications, you'll want it to be located where the user can sit comfortably without worrying about creating a line. Typically, any kiosk which involves a fairly long user session should be placed just slightly off the beaten path - and you'll need to plan the surrounding area to allow for the unique new workflow the kiosk will create.

Also, consider the photo processing kiosk: Users tend to stand (or sit) at these machines for quite a long time, previewing photos and swapping out memory cards. These kiosks should be located so that if a queue forms, it can be comfortably and conveniently wound away from high-traffic areas - and, ideally, customers waiting in that line will have other things to see and do.

Location has an influence not just on the success of your machines, but also on the makes and models you will choose. For instance, if the kiosks are going to be in a fairly remote part of the store, security becomes an issue, more so than if they are placed near the customer service desk.

As an example, Birg points out the mistakes made by some cinema chains in their adoption of ticket sales kiosks. "Many theater chains did not want to invest in high quality, outdoor weatherproof units, so they went with indoor ticketing kiosks. Typically, customers see the kiosks after they have already stood in line and purchased their tickets from a cashier."

Step 4: Choose your vendor(s) and machinery

Now that the tough decision-making is out of the way, all that's left to do is buy some machines and set them up, right? Wrong! Some of the most crucial decisions lay just ahead as you begin to explore the incredible array of products, manufacturers and service providers available.

As with any other purchase, word-of-mouth recommendation is the best way to make an intelligent choice. If you have a colleague or a friend who has had a good experience with a kiosk vendor, that's a strong starting point.

Failing that, look for manufacturers that have worked extensively in the past within your industry. If you're a healthcare provider, it's a waste of time to try to work with a kiosk company that chiefly serves the gaming industry.

One word that will come up often at this stage is "turnkey." Although different providers use it to mean different things, it generally means that you'll be buying the hardware, software and service from one company. Sometimes, it means you'll be using off-the-shelf software that you'll customize yourself; in other cases, the kiosk company will include software customization in their fee.

At this point, it is time to think about ergonomics. Again, location has an impact: how bright and how large does the monitor need to be? Is it going to be located outside, requiring weatherproof components? Will more than one person be trying to view the monitor at a time? Will users likely include people with poor eyesight? These are all questions to discuss with your new-found kiosk provider.

Step 5: Design the customer experience

After all this planning and research, it is easy to become enamored of your new fleet of kiosks. After all, they're beautiful! Their color schemes coordinate with your retail space, they're ergonomic, just the right height and positioned perfectly throughout the store.

But all of this means nothing to the customer if the kiosk experience isn't pleasant. In fact, all of the positive aspects just mentioned are secondary in the mind of the user. They want the machine to do what it is supposed to do, and in the quickest and easiest fashion.

"It is imperative that a kiosk be inviting and easy to use for the customer," Berens said. "Well-designed kiosks with a good value proposition for the customer will be successful. The industry has shown this many times. Well-designed kiosks can achieve ROI in a matter of a few months."

This relies on the software part of the equation and, once again, this is an opportunity to either excel or fall behind. The actual interface that the user sees and interacts with should follow some basic, established rules of thumb, such as minimum font sizes, buttons big enough to comfortably access via touch, color schemes that are pleasing to the eye. Fortunately, most turnkey and off-the-shelf software solutions are designed with these rules in mind.

But problems can arise when companies try to retrofit existing content into a new kiosk. According to Kearns, this is particularly common when businesses decide to reuse their Web sites in a kiosk. The two sets of data might seem similar on the surface - after all, they're both self-service electronic communiqués between the customer and one or more databases - but their differences are huge.

"The user experience at home versus that at the kiosk level is very different," Kearns said. "Many issues relate to usability. As one example, most kiosks feature touchscreens, which are very customer-friendly, intuitive input devices. Many online retail sites feature a number of very small links, which are not easy targets for customers using in-store kiosks. Retailers that actually understand this issue will develop a kiosk version of their existing site."

Step 6: The human factor

No matter how many automated tools and self-service systems your business employs, it will always rely on human beings - after all, no machine is totally maintenance-free. In most business processes, kiosks are useful components, but they are just one link in a chain that begins with a customer need and ends with customer satisfaction.

"It is important to reassure employees that kiosks are not intended to replace them, but rather to compliment them," Kearns wisely points out. "Kiosks should handle routine customer questions and transactions, allowing employees to respond to more in-depth customer needs."

Your employees are also pivotal in getting customers to use the kiosks. While some intrepid shoppers will try out new devices and figure them out on their own, most require a little (or more) hand-holding. An older shopper who is used to talking to a customer service representative to receive a copy of her niece's gift registry is going to need help printing one out for herself from a kiosk.

"It is very important that employees understand the purpose of the kiosk, and that they feel that it is an important part of the company's initiative," Berens said. She has seen her customers have pre-launch contests in which employees can win prizes for using the new machines; others have offered incentives to both employees and customers for using the kiosks.

Above all, Berens stresses the importance of getting employees involved so that they realize the kiosks are a tool to be used for their benefit. "Employees that are involved in the excitement of the launch are more supportive of the project as a whole, and will encourage customers to use the kiosk," she said.

Birg recommends that, at the very least, the kiosk manufacturer be hired to come on site pre-launch and have a comprehensive training and Q&A session with all employees who will be involved with the machines. He also recommends regular kiosk meetings, where employees can discuss problems and offer suggestions for improvements in marketing, workflow and machine placement.

Step 7: Make a plan for maintenance and logistics

As you get closer to launch date, it becomes important to divide the new duties that the kiosks will create. Who will be responsible for checking each machine for supplies, and at what times of the day will that be done?

From a technological standpoint, remote monitoring and management goes a long way toward improving kiosk maintenance. Most networked machines come with some variety of remote management functionality built in; this allows managers to log in from a remote location and check on all of the pertinent statistics for each machine. Is a cash acceptor jammed or a printer out of paper? Is a mouse not functioning? All of these can be checked remotely, and, as a result, corrected quickly.

Things do break, of course, and it is essential to have the necessary parts available should a repair become necessary. Birg recommends that owners keep one spare parts kiosk on hand for every ten kiosks deployed. "If you have 50 kiosks with receipt printers, LCD touchscreens, card readers and PC, you need to have five extra sets of hardware that go inside and another five kiosks for quick swapping of an entire kiosk in busy environments," he says.

Making an airtight maintenance plan will be one of the most important steps you take in the whole process. Few things are worse for a business than a malfunctioning or out-of-order kiosk.

"If a kiosk is down for more than a few minutes, then all of the money spent on the kiosk rollout was wasted money," Birg says.

Step 8: Roll 'em out

There are different schools of thought when it comes to rollout. Some recommend deploying your entire fleet of kiosks at once, while others stand by a pilot program where you deploy a few, tweak and modify the system, then gradually install the remainder.

Which approach is right for you will depend on your unique situation, and it is something you should discuss with your kiosk company. There are pros and cons to both approaches, of course.

"The advantage of a pilot is that it offers the ability to test the concept and make refinements prior to mass deployment," said Berens. "It also allows for an initial lower cost investment in the hardware.

"The advantage of a full-scale rollout at once is that all customers can use the kiosk, excitement can be generated around the rollout and problems associated with different offerings or capabilities at each site can be eliminated."

Birg recommends a solution that blends the two approaches - a controlled mini-rollout in one location, with a human employee standing by to take customer feedback after using the kiosk. "This is an invaluable step to make sure that you are implementing a project at the right time," he said.

Planning for the future

Once the machines are installed, configured and started up, your relationship with them will change: they are now a part of your company, and it falls to you to continue to integrate them into your business processes in ways that make sense for both the company and the customer.

According to Sylvia Berens, new kiosk owners often make critical errors at this stage: they don't adequately market and promote the kiosks to their customers, and they don't keep their staff motivated and trained.

"Adding kiosks to your business plan does not finish at sending a check to the kiosk manufacturer," Birg added. "If you plan to increase revenues and efficiency by implementing kiosks, it is an ongoing project where the health of the kiosk and its marketing plan have to be addressed at all times."