News
Site surveys essential — and often overlooked
July 23, 2006
This article appeared in the Retail Self-Service Executive Summary, Summer 2006.
No matter how well designed or planned, any technology product is actually two products: the one on the drawing board and the one in the real world.
Whether it is a car or an MP3 player or a kiosk, all devices function one way in the lab and another way once they see the light of day.
So it is with self-service technology. Too often, companies focus a disproportionate amount of attention on how the application works in testing without considering what the deployment location will mean.
Peter Honebein, Ph.D., president of Customer Performance Group and co-author of "Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers," points to a certain hotel in southern California as an example of what can go wrong when a pre-installation site survey is ignored.
"(The self-check-in kiosk) was hidden to the side of the registration desk, because easy access to power and data connection was not available at the ideal position — the main entryway," he said. "Guests didn't know it was there until after they had checked in."
This positioning, of course, rendered the device useless.
To prevent such horror stories, a thorough pre-inspection survey is a good idea. Joseph Kloss, spokesman forPitney Bowes, said such a survey is essential.
"It is necessary to inspect the physical location in order to determine the work that is required to prepare the site for installation," he said. "The outcome of the survey would be a report that will be reviewed with the customer to outline both customer and vendor responsibilities."
So who should be involved with the decision-making facilitated by such a survey? Honebein said there are three key players when it comes to a self-service implementation, all of whom should be involved in the survey: the project manager for the implementation, the person who manages the physical space where the kiosk will be placed (for instance, a store manager), and the facilities/IT person who understands how to wire the new devices for power and data. If complex software integration is going to take place, it also is wise to have someone from IT on hand who understands the company's core database operations.
"Beyond that, it really depends upon the political structure of the store or parent company to get new innovations installed," he said. "You should perform a stakeholder analysis to understand these dynamics."
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