News
Create new possibilities
July 23, 2006
This article appeared in the Retail Self-Service Executive Summary, Summer 2006.
Using streaming video on kiosks to help customers use them seems like a smart and easy idea. But for a variety of reasons, it's just now catching on.
Two companies, Experticity andSMART Technologies, are offering live-assisted selling devices. The technology creates new possibilities for upselling, cross-selling and suggested- selling. For example, a remote gift- registry kiosk consultant can suggest higher-priced merchandise as a client is creating a wish list.
Microsoft showcased partner-company Experticity's LiveSupport on-screen, on-demand service at Retail Systems 2006. The kiosk software incorporates a remote customer-service professional via webcam who can answer questions, print info to the kiosk or run the kiosk's interface on the customer's behalf.
"The agent can say ‘O.K., here's the cheapest (gift) but here are some other alternatives,' upselling in a way an automated system can't do," said D.L. Baron, Experticity chairman.
Experticity currently targets big footprint, warehouse-style chain retailers that sell products requiring large amounts of technical knowledge.
The week before Experticity showed the solution in Chicago, SMART Technologies showed Instant Expert at the Digital Retailing Expo. The solution incorporates Tandberg and Polycom video conferencing hardware, a large SMART interactive digital sign, Omnivex software and an audio dome by Brown Innovations that lets the staff on the other side hear the customer's softest whisper.
Robert Grawet, SMART's director of interactive digital signage, conceived Instant Expert while reading a Business Week article describing the difficulty Home Depot has with keeping a competent sales staff.
Retailers "all have similar problems, 107 percent-per-year turnover, things like that," Grawet said. "Instant Expert allows them to not have an expert in every aisle all day, every day. They instead can have an expert on a regional basis."
Is it worth it?
There are few hard metrics yet to verify the effectiveness of live-assisted selling devices, though Baron said using LiveSupport next to a product can increase its sales from 300 to 400 percent. And according to an Experticity case study, LiveSupport can decrease the need for on-site staff by 17 percent.
While these applications are new, the concept of a live-assisted kiosk is almost 30 years old.
Banks were first to provide assistance to ATM customers, via video camera, in the 1970s. Now, ATM manufacturers NCR, Diebold andWincor Nixdorfhave returned to the concept, allowing customers to communicate with a remote teller.
Analyst Francis Duffy has followed the self-service industry since ATMs became widespread. He says live-assisted self-service devices are less worthwhile for high-touch specialty retailers.
"To cost-effectively run a live Q&A session with an expert requires a certain degree of scale," Duffy said. "Very large chains with high staff turnover and marginally knowledgeable sales personnel stand to benefit the most from running centralized live-expert operations because there is a greater chance that demand for the service and resulting sales will justify the costs of installing and operating such systems."
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Kiosk Marketplace.
