This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, Mar/Apr 2006.
Three letters divide a successful self-service deployment from a failure: ROI. We asked industry experts Doug Peter, president of St. Clair Interactive Communications Inc., Ron Bowers, senior vice president of business development at Frank Mayer & Assoc. and Terry Kasen, business unit director at Agilysys Inc. for 10 tips on squeezing the maximum revenue out of your kiosk investment. Here's what they had to say.
Define the goal
It will be impossible to determine a positive or negative ROI unless a company knows how much, and what type of, ROI it wants. Typically, self-service ROI manifests itself in the form of more sales, lower expenses, increased service or expanded customer knowledge.
Some of the best kiosk deployments create all of those. But as with business decision, if the costs of a kiosk project outweigh the potential benefits, deployment is an unwise choice.
Know your customer
"You start with the end-users and find out what they want to do that they can't do now," Peter said. "And you enable them to do that in a convenient and quick way. Talk to them, talk to your employees who deal with them every day. You can do more or less formal research discussions, but you can observe shopper behavior, or patient behavior or bank customer behavior pretty quickly."
Hit the ‘sweet spot'
After managers research the customer's needs and the business's goals, Peter advises clients to find intersections where the company's needs overlap with the consumer's, and use kiosks to service those areas for maximum return; for example, when a retailer needs to sell more products and the customers want more product information.
"It's the sweet spot in the middle that generates the ROI," Peter said. "After that, it's planning and execution."
Shop aroundGood managers collect multiple competing bids before executing a project, and the same principle guides kiosk deployments.
"We suggest people go to two or three experienced people in the industry and have them build a story board," Peter said, "or a design and a functional spec. Most clients don't want to do that. Typically they'll come to us, or they'll go to Nanonation, or IBM Global Services if they have a bunch of money, and they go through a design phase which in our case includes a story board with a look and feel.
Use the right components
Buying better hardware today generally means long-term savings on upgrades and maintenance.
"Don't pick a component that just satisfies today's needs," Kasen said. "Pick a component that'll fill future needs as well. An example would be, don't just pick a narrow receipt printer. Don't just pick what's cheap right now. Pick technology that's going to work down the road.
"Using the right kind of touchscreen technology is important as well. Don't pick a touchscreen that needs to be calibrated frequently. Because this (kiosk) is unattended, you won't necessarily know when your customers can't touch what they want to touch."
Brand it
The way the kiosk functions should mirror the customer's expectations of the products or the vendor.
"In order for it to be successful in a retail environment, it has to reflect the branded image of the product manufacturer, or the retailer," Bowers said. "The branded image in a Sharper Image store and the correct branded image for a Wal-Mart store are two different things. You should make sure the specific identities the customer ties in with the store and the product are satisfied."
Know where to put it
The best kiosk in a bad place does the customer and the company no good.
"It's pretty much retail 101," Bowers said. "There has to be a call to action for the unit. It's the same formula that is used in retail merchandising for point of purchase, impulse sales, or retail sales.
"I'm referring to a formula that is interpreted by the brand image of the store and the product. The consumers' experience with, and using of the kiosk, should be consistent with the brand experience that the retailer and the product marketer have designed."
Educate the employees
Make sure the kiosks' functions and purposes are understood by employees and include training in the project plan.
BMW commissioned one of the most functionally advanced kiosks ever built, and it broke new ground in BMW's market as female customers sought information about the car's safety — departing from the norm of male customers enjoying its sporty features.
But success was limited by lot-level personnel. "The BMW kiosk was so advanced, many of the salespeople couldn't use it," Bowers said.
Maintain it correctly
Kasen recommends outsourcing maintenance to reputable specialists.
"I believe the right thing to do is to use a service organization that understands technology and understands its use in the business it's in," Kasen said. "Retail stores are, more oft en than not, open on evenings and weekends. A business needs to hire a service organization to serve a fixed need as quickly as possible. It can't wait."
Measure your success and modify as needed
Peter emphasized the importance of taking measurements before the kiosk is installed, then using those measurements as a control group.
"You test, measure and evolve. You do that with a combination of system capabilities to generate statistics and interaction reports, integration with point of sale to see how many transactions are being completed, and customer reaction. You look at the number of fulfillments that you do on the kiosk and you look at the type of fulfillment.
Even though they might be demographically matched, different locations provide different results and require minor modifications to the way things are presented and prioritized. It's like a good direct marketing vehicle. It can always be improved to provide a better yield. We treat it kind of like a living thing, rather than you do it once and forget about it."
