The Self-service/Unattended Kiosks Industry
One basis for the rise of self service unattended kiosks is the fact that many people prefer to solve problems on their own rather than speaking with a customer service agent. In many cases the reason for this is that the customer is looking for convenience and speed.
What many retailers are learning is that self-service technology cannot only help support a humanized environment; It is necessary to give consumers the choices they are looking for. A study by SuperOffice revealed that 88% of customers want a response from customer service within 60 minutes. This need for speed means that if the customer has a way of immediately obtaining the answers they seek there is a good chance that they will be satisfied provided their experience was effortless and satisfactory.
Backing this up is research from SOTI that indicated that U.S. retail consumers prefer speed and convenience when shopping with limited human interaction. 73% of those polled favored self-service technologies which reduce interactions with staff. A Harvard Business report from 2017 showed that 81% of all customers attempt to take care of issues themselves before reaching out to a live employee.
Technological Payment Solutions
When it comes to payments, there are many different types of cashless payments on the market today. These include credit and debit cards whose advantage is flexibility since they can also be used for online purchases, POS machines, online transactions as well as enabling other types of digital payments such as mobile wallets, digital payment apps, etc. which are quickly gaining acceptance thanks to their convenience and security.
Quickly falling out of use is USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), a cashless payment option for shoppers who don’t have a smartphone. In this method, the user interacts with a voice menu via a mobile screen.
QR (Quick Response) codes are starting to catch on. They are two-dimensional codes comprised of black squares arranged on a square grid. They are read and interpreted using your phone’s camera.
One of the hottest technologies driving self service operability is smart pulse. Smart pulse enables the combination of accepting both cash coins and cashless means of payments. Contactless payments are convenient and secure. By simply tapping a card or NFC enabled phones near a point of sale terminal, the transaction is completed using NFC (near field communication) or RFID technology.
Leading Self-service Applications
- ATMs (Automated Teller Machines)
- Airport self-service check-in and baggage drops
- Automated service check-in and check-out kiosks at hotels
- Self-service parking
- Self-service gas stations
- Self-ordering kiosks in restaurants
- Post office self-serve technologies
- Supermarket kiosks and self-scanning checkouts
- Museum and art gallery kiosks for ticketing, interactive exhibits, and guided tours
- Movie theatre ticketing kiosks
Consumer Habits
There is no question that the combination of technology COVID-19 pandemic and evolving consumer habits are all driving the trend towards contact list and self serve means of engagement.
A survey examining consumer self-service checkout adoption conducted by Retale showed that 85 percent of Americans have used a self-service kiosk, with the number rising to 91 percent for millennial’s in the 18–34 age group. The survey showed interesting results like 49% of consumers want self-service kiosks at every store and 20% want the option to pay with a mobile device.
Another survey by IBM, projected that 85% of all customer interactions will be handled without a human agent or automatically by the early 2020’s. As customers engage more and more with self service digital kiosks, the customer experience is changing and so too are there ways that companies are deploying self-service kiosks to engage with customers.
Self-service digital kiosks are Impacting consumers behavior and changing the way they think and act. Analysis of McDonald’s self-service kiosks showed average check sizes to be 30 percent higher with 20 percent of consumers now adding a drink to their order.
In other words, up-sell tactics integrated into the self-service kiosk sales process encouraged patrons to increase the size of their orders. One takeaway from this is that self-serve removes societal pressure and fear of social judgement.
The digital kiosks eliminate the social friction of customer fear of being misunderstood or appearing unsophisticated in front of the clerks. Studies conducted at the National University of Singapore, Rotman School of Management, and Duke’s Fuqua School, revealed that the adoption of self-service digital kiosks recorded more orders for hard to pronounce products.
Ryan Buell, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, points out that we’re deeply social animals and social connections are important to our wellbeing and our mental health. When we talk to people, we’re happier. A person has the ability to delight us or disappoint us. It’s really hard for a technology to delight, however, because it’s standardized and is built on a set of rules.
How Self-service is Enhancing Personal Touch
Self-service automation can improve efficiency, but in a retail environment, the human touch is as important as ever.
Think about it; what types of establishments do you really enjoy patronizing? If you think about the places where you have a sense of belonging or loyalty to, they are often places where you’ve established some sort of intimacy, some kind of a relationship.
For example, a coffee shop you frequent, where the baristas recognize you or know you by name, maybe they’re familiar with your typical order. This personalized feeling makes you feel important or special and your inherent need to socially interact is stroked. Your transaction is more meaningful, thanks to the human interaction.
There is no question that self service is here to stay it’s just important to realize that while self-service can be very cost effective for companies, you have to make sure you don’t lose the heart and soul of the consumer by making things too impersonal . Finding the right mix is going to be the key to success deploying self service technologies in the future.
To sum up, there are five factors that can determine a customer’s willingness to willingly engage in self-service. First, customers have to know what’s expected of them. Second, they need to be capable of accomplishing the task. Third, the more customized the interaction is the better. Fourth, the customer needs to understand the upside of expending the extra effort to do it by himself. Fifth, the process needs to be streamlined and give a sense of saving time.
