The Library of Congress Experience might have been the belle of the ball at the Self Service Excellence Awards, held earlier this month at the KioskCom Self Service Expo in Las Vegas, but other deployments stood out in the retail, healthcare and travel verticals, as well.
NCR Corp. took home two awards:
In the Best Travel/Hospitality Deployment category, the company's kiosk program with the Hertz Corporation caught the judges' attention for its obvious resonance with busy travelers and its customer satisfaction level. The car-rental company first worked with NCR to deploy online check-in kiosks in 2007 and since has expanded the program to more than 37 United States airports, as well as five locations in Europe.
The kiosks expedite the rental car pick-up process by allowing customers to begin checking in from their home or office and complete the rental via kiosk upon arriving at the airport. Similar to an airline check-in kiosk, the program has a reservation-based system that collects the customer's personal information and identifies the reservation. The solution also allows Hertz customers to select and purchase upgrades, optional insurance products, fuel options and add-ons such as child seats or Hertz's customized GPS system. NCR provides Hertz with hardware support services, including remote management and help-desk assistance.
The Self Service Excellence Award winners are judged partly on how successful the deployment has been, and the NCR/Hertz partnership certainly has produced some impressive results. Hertz has seen approximately 65 percent average usage rates across all of its kiosk locations, and the company has provided more than 340,000 rental cars via the self-service program.
"Consumers are increasingly expecting to find the convenience of self-service wherever they interact," said Theresa Heinz, general manager, NCR Travel. "By extending the option of self-service to its customers, Hertz has further strengthened its leadership position in the industry while improving the experience for Hertz customers. We are proud to be a Hertz partner and congratulate the company on its award-winning self-service program."
In the Best Healthcare Deployment category, NCR picked up another award for its MediKiosk patient check-in system, deployed with Adventist Health System. Adventist operates 37 hospitals, 17 skilled nursing centers and 20 home healthcare agencies in 10 states. The company has 43,000 employees and serves four million patients annually.
The MediKiosk allows patients to check in for medical appointments using a driver's license or credit card or prompts first-time patients to enter all necessary demographic and insurance information, as well as to sign forms electronically.
Adventist also deployed the NCR Patient Portal, which gives patients access to their account balances and bill-payment services, and an electronic referral platform, which enables physicians to submit and track patient referrals electronically.
Through the kiosk program, Adventist has decreased average patient registration time by four minutes per visit, allowing staff to process more patients at a time and simplifying training requirements for consent and privacy documents. In 2008, more than $4.87 million in payments was received via the self-service channel.
According to comments from the judges of the Self Service Excellence Awards, the deployment was impressive because it accomplished providing an easy-to-use interactive tool for patients while decreasing costs and increasing productivity for the provider at the same time.
"By using NCR's self-service technology, we've been able to consistently increase data accuracy, solicit outstanding patient balances and boost collections," said Tim Reiner, senior revenue officer for Adventist, in an NCR case study on the deployment.
VIDEO: The NCR/Adventist deployment
In the Best Retail Deployment category, Canada's Indigo Books and Music (which also operates Chapters stores) won for its Next Generation Retail kiosk, which was developed in response to two key in-store customer behavior insights: 25 percent of the customers who visited an Indigo or Chapters store with an intent to purchase left without doing so, and 70 percent of Indigo customers saw the existing in-store kiosks as a staff tool rather than a customer resource.
The retailer's pre-deployment analysis also showed that customers regularly had trouble locating products in-store, were unable to search for items in a particular subject area or found that the item they wanted was out of stock.
To solve these issues, Indigo partnered with IBM Canada in 2008 to upgrade the kiosk program and launched a hardware-only pilot in six stores, which saw a 25-percent increase in usage and a seven-percent increase in product orders. Upon rolling out the entire program, Indigo saw a 150-percent increase in usage over the previous year, as well as a 10-percent increase in product orders. Survey results from Net Promoter also have indicated promising figures:
• 29 percent of customers who used the kiosks and also made a purchase. • 95 percent of customers who used the kiosks said they were "easy to use." • 75 percent of store employees said the kiosks were "helpful in selling to customers."
"Indigo's Next Generation Kiosk had ambitious goals of delivering significant sales increases through improved in-store conversion while also being a strong fit with our brand," said Sumit Oberai, senior vice president of technology for the retailer. "We internally believe that we delivered against those objectives and are very proud of the external recognition provided by winning the Best Retail Deployment award amongst a field of U.S. and international competitors."
The Self Service Excellence Awards judges reported that the complex deployment was particularly impressive because of its focus on the customer and use of extended branding to drive traffic to the kiosks.
