Are you seeking ways for your business to enhance the customer experience and improve the speed of your services? It is true that customer satisfaction lies at the foundation of a successful and long-lasting business. With ever-growing competition, there are multiple businesses that offer similar services. Customers prefer quick and hassle-free service along with quality.
To stay ahead of the game in a competitive environment, businesses have to ensure impeccable customer service and remarkable quality. The key to delivering a great customer experience is to manage your resources properly and implement automation with the right technology. Self-service kiosks are a great way to speed up your processes, improve your profitability, and deliver best-in-class customer experiences.
What Are Self-Service Kiosks?
Self-service kiosks are interactive touch-screen devices that businesses can install at fixed points on-site to help their customers with diverse requirements. Be it gathering process information or executing activities such as making bookings, placing orders, and filling out forms, customers can operate the self-service kiosks independently.
The concept of ‘self-service’ has been around for a long time. Digital interactive kiosks are designed in a very user-friendly way with an easy-to-navigate interface that enables customers to execute actions themselves with greater privacy and without having to disclose their private information or requirements to the on-site tellers or executives.
How Do Businesses Benefit From Self-Service Kiosks?
According to a report, the global interactive kiosk market is projected to reach a value of $21.42 billion by 2027. Businesses all over the world are implementing self-service kiosks to fulfill diverse business use cases in the form of self-checkout stations, smart vending machines, ticketing booths, information desks, etc., to streamline their services and improve customer experience.
Let’s look at the key business benefits of implementing self-service kiosks:
1. Better Use of Resources
One of the key benefits of self-service kiosks is that it reduce the work pressure on the on-site staff to attend to customers. It saves businesses from deploying a large workforce on-site to greet and attend to customers. The self-service kiosks enable faster and better visitor management, allowing employees to cater to more pressing needs.
2. Improved Customer Experience
Businesses generally struggle with the challenge of people coming to their outlet, observing long queues, and leaving. Self-service kiosks are also a great way to prevent long queues and wait times to improve the customer experience. Customers can skip long queues and easily operate the self-serve kiosk to obtain accurate and fast services with greater privacy. These factors play a vital role in enhancing the customer experience and their loyalty to your business.
3 Scalability
With newer corporate trends emerging daily, businesses can easily adapt to the newer digital trends. Be it switching to online portals for transactions, form submissions, or accepting instant digital payments, self-service kiosks can be used to automate complex activities. The implementation of interactive kiosks allows businesses greater scalability to digitalize their repetitive tasks and incorporate the latest trends.
4. Remote Management
Self-service kiosks nullify the need for on-site employees to constantly be present at the counter to help customers. By integrating your self-serve kiosks with software like Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, businesses can remotely manage the digital kiosks’ activities, updates, and settings. Whether your interactive kiosks require a system upgrade or are experiencing technical errors, IT administrators of organizations can remotely manage activities and resolve issues. This saves IT admins from paying frequent site visits and speeds up the process of kiosk device management.
5. Improved Profitability
Adopting interactive kiosks for customer management allows companies to save massive costs because they no longer need to invest in a large workforce. The enterprise no longer needs to engage in long hours of training employees to cater to customers. Instead, the employees can be put to use for more demanding and crucial tasks. The self-serve kiosks present high automation capabilities that lower operational and overhead business costs. Moreover, as self-serve kiosks make your services fast and accurate, your business is bound to gain momentum with an increasing customer base and greater revenue.
6. Greater Efficiency
When your customer service is solely dependent on your staff, there are several roadblocks that may arise. A single day of low bandwidth due to sick leaves, vacations, and extended breaks can cause businesses to lose out on customers. With self-service kiosks, you can deliver consistent service with the same level of accuracy at any time of the day. Digital kiosks provide a large throughput in less time.
Industries That Use Self-Service Kiosks
Self-service kiosks are systems that can be utilized by nearly every major industrial sector to streamline their customer service.
Here are the top industries that use self-service kiosks:
1. BFSI
Self-service kiosks play a major role in banking and financial institutes. Banks install several digital self-serve kiosks to help customers skip long hours of waiting and execute transactions, withdraw or deposit money, cash cheques, collect printouts, filling out order forms, fill out loan applications, open new accounts, and much more. Several finance and insurance companies allow their customers to check balances, change PINs, or conduct online banking securely and privately without having to interact with their in-house staff.
2. Healthcare
Most modern hospitals and medical centres allow their customers to obtain information, book appointments, gather test results, make online payments, etc., using self-service kiosks. This cuts down patients’ wait time and minimises the hospital staff’s burden. Hospitals can also implement their digital kiosks in the form of internet kiosks or smart medicine dispensers, which helps patients obtain instant assistance independently.
3. Travel & Hospitality
Digital kiosks are not new to the hospitality industry. You will find multiple digital kiosks implemented in hotel lobbies, fast-food chains, restaurants, hotels, airports, movie threats, etc., with an aim to help customers get instant help. People can make table reservations at restaurants, book hotel rooms, make self-check-ins and checkouts, select the preferred seats at the movie theatre, book a flight and obtain instant tickets, and even make instant online payments conveniently for all these activities from a single self-serve kiosk. Besides, there are many hiking locations in rural and mountain areas with a lack of digital kiosks. The trekking experts consider this feature and provide their customers with all technical equipment in advance. Thereby, if a traveler hikes around Northern Italy, for example, there’s a high chance the tourist will have a detailed map of Alta via 1 with all the paths and trails needed for their comfortable walking.
4. Retail
Gone are the days when customers had to interact face-to-face with retail executives or store workers to help them find choose the products of their choice. Retail stores, shopping malls and consumer stores have interactive kiosks that help customers on various levels. Right from finding the way in a big shopping center, to pre-booking products that are soon to enter the market, using photobooths to click pictures with friends and family, and processing discount vouchers & discount coupons, the retail sector offers self-help kiosks for enhanced in-store customer experience.
Scalefusion Kiosk Mode for Businesses
Extending exceptional customer service and great product quality is the formula to success in today’s business environment. Businesses all over the world are implementing self-serve kiosks to improve their productivity, automate their process and simplify their customer experience. But regardless of how you deploy self-service kiosks for your diverse business requirements, efficient management of these digital devices is a crucial aspect. Businesses can make the most of their digital self-serve kiosks with the right Kiosk Device Management platform.
Scalefusion MDM is a Kiosk Software that helps businesses constantly manage and monitor their unattended digital kiosks but also turn their off-the-shelf digital devices such as smartphones and tablets into dedicated kiosks. Businesses can save massive costs on purchasing special kiosk devices, all you have to do is leverage the single-app kiosk mode to lock your digital devices into a single specific app from the Scalefusion dashboard.
Scalefusion MDM simplifies your self-service kiosk management with the following features:
- Lock devices into a single app or website remotely to obtain instant kiosks.
- Management of Android, iOS and Windows 10 kiosks from a single unified dashboard.
- Save on-site visits in events of kiosk device issues using Remote Cast & Control.
- Manage OS and app updates and patch fixes remotely.
- Push security policies on the kiosk devices to prevent users from misusing the devices or exposing them to vulnerabilities.
- Remotely monitor kiosk device vitals such as battery status, data usage and device inactivity with the help of extensive detailed device Reports.
- Continuously monitor all your diversely located kiosks with a comprehensive overview based on device usage with Scalefusion’s DeepDive analytics.
Closing Lines
Customer service and satisfaction are the key elements that can make or break a business’s reputation. If you are looking for ways to improve profitability, reduce your repetitive manual tasks, speed up your processes and give your customers the independence to execute their own activities, then self-service kiosks are the right choice for you. No matter which type of self-service kiosk you implement, Scalefusion has a plethora of features that can make your kiosk device management journey a breeze.
FAQs
Q1. What is the function of a self-service kiosk?
A self-service kiosk is an automated, stand-alone device that enables users to conduct a variety of transactions or access services independently, without the need for direct assistance from a staff member. These smart self service kiosks are designed to streamline processes, enhance customer experience, and improve efficiency. Functions can range from placing orders in restaurants, checking in at hotels or airports, accessing employee services, to making payments. The integration of self service devices into businesses caters to the evolving consumer demand for speed, convenience, and autonomy.
Q2. What businesses use self-service kiosks?
Self-service kiosks have been widely adopted across multiple industries due to their versatility and the benefits they offer. The benefits of kiosks in restaurants include speeding up the ordering process and reducing wait times. Retail stores implement customer service kiosks to assist customers in finding products, checking availability, and making purchases. Airlines and hotels leverage the advantages of check in kiosks to streamline the check-in process. Additionally, healthcare facilities, entertainment venues, and corporate environments employ employee self service kiosks to facilitate access to services and information, enhancing operational efficiency.
Q3. How does a self-service kiosk help?
Self-service kiosks help by providing a seamless, efficient, and user-friendly way for customers to access services and complete transactions. In restaurants, kiosks improve order accuracy and reduce waiting times, directly contributing to a better customer experience. As automated kiosk solutions, they also assist businesses in managing peak traffic times more effectively, without the need to significantly increase staff. Furthermore, self service kiosk machines offer 24/7 accessibility, reducing the pressure on human customer service representatives and allowing businesses to serve their customers around the clock.
Q4. What is the impact of self-service?
The impact of self-service is profound, touching on customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and business profitability. By empowering customers to serve themselves at their own pace, businesses notice a significant uplift in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Self-service technologies, including self-service kiosks, have also been instrumental in reducing operational costs, as they streamline processes and reduce the need for labor-intensive services. Additionally, they provide valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors, enabling businesses to tailor their offerings and improve their service quality further.
Q5. How much does a self-service kiosk software cost?
The cost of self-service kiosk software can vary widely depending on the complexity of the application, the features required, and the level of customization. Basic software solutions might start at a few hundred dollars per kiosk, while more advanced, custom-developed applications could run into thousands. It’s also important to consider ongoing costs for software updates, maintenance, and technical support. For a precise estimate, it’s recommended to consult with several vendors to compare pricing and functionalities, ensuring the solution aligns with the specific needs of your business and offers a solid return on investment.
