Self-Order Kiosk for Retail and Restaurant : Everything You Need to Know

As businesses everywhere discover the benefits of implementing a self-order kiosk, the demand for this solution has risen. You may be considering implementing kiosks yourself but aren’t sure whether you would receive a fair return or which option to choose.

This guide provides a comprehensive look at self-order kiosks and how business owners can implement them to see the best return possible.

What are Kiosk POS Solutions?

Kiosk POS solutions are an ideal way to engage customers digitally, speed up lines, and offer a better customer experience. These give you the tools you need from your POS while providing flexibility and control. Kiosks equipped with POS software can process transactions and simplify business operations.

In competitive industries like hospitality and retail, the customer experience is paramount. Self-order kiosks give customers more control over their experience and remove many frustrations, like long wait times and errors.

Flexibility with payment options is also another area that matters to customers. Your patrons expect to use credit cards, gift cards, and more.

Overall Benefits of Kiosk POS for Business

Self-order kiosks provide a whole host of benefits across industries. Moreover, they go beyond offering benefits to you, the business owner. They also offer significant benefits to your customers.

Improved customer experience

In the digital age, convenience is critical. Kiosks, equipped with user-friendly and intuitive interfaces, guide customers through prompts quickly and accurately.

Increased speed of service

Kiosks also speed up transactions and effectively reduce wait times for guests. For tasks that don’t require face-to-face interaction, kiosk POS allows guests to take care of things quickly and be on their way.

Prioritized workforce

Since your staff isn’t tied up doing purely transactional tasks, you can assign them to more important and profitable business areas, like answering customer inquiries or helping expedite orders.

Attracting new customers

The wide availability of technology has created a distaste for unnecessary human interactions or hassles, while some customers may have barriers that make communication more difficult. These customers prefer self-order kiosks because of the accessibility and low-pressure environment they create.

Improved employee satisfaction

It’s not just customers that become frustrated with excessive interactions. Workers are often pulled from carrying out essential job duties to handle tasks that can easily be carried out by kiosk POS. This frequent task-switching can slow down productivity and decrease focus. Workers are happier when they can carry out their jobs effectively.

Everything Restaurant Operators Should Know About Self-Order Kiosk Software

Enhanced service options

Kiosks are not a replacement for employees. Many restaurants that implement kiosk technology hire more staff to help customers with the new platform and handle the sudden influx in orders. After Panera implemented mobile ordering and kiosks, their sales increased more than 6%, leading them to hire 1,700 new employees.

Order customization

With a self-order kiosk, customers have complete control over their order and can customize it for their specific wants and needs without making them feel like a burden on staff. Additionally, when customers can see a full list of ingredients, they can make more informed decisions about what they want, avoiding order dissatisfaction and returns. Self-order kiosks also minimize customer-to-staff misunderstandings, resulting in fewer order errors and increased customer satisfaction.

Deliver faster service

Kiosks allow your business to deliver faster service by essentially acting as additional employees. Not only do they reduce wait times, but they also allow your existing staff to redistribute their labor to other tasks if needed, such as to assist food prep or wipe down dirty tables. A kiosk’s function is not to replace your employees but to help them become more efficient.

Boost table turnover

Self-ordering kiosk software boosts table turnover by reducing the time each transaction takes. Instead of staff taking the time to handwrite orders and transfer them to the POS terminal, customers can enter orders and transmit them to the kitchen immediately. This method also works to eliminate mistakes that take time to correct.

Benefits of a Self-Order Kiosk for Restaurants

Restaurants, in particular, can discover great benefits by leveraging self-order kiosks. As customer expectations rise along with costs, restaurant owners must find creative ways to stay ahead of the competition without breaking the bank. One way to deliver on these demands is through kiosk POS, which offers:

Increased ticket sizes

Kiosks make it easier to upsell to customers by adding enticing visuals, recommended pairings, or drink options. With these tempting offers in front of them, customers are much more likely to increase their order.

Line-busting

A happy customer is a customer that doesn’t have to wait in line. Self-order kiosks speed up transactions exponentially. Whether you transition over to kiosks entirely or utilize them to speed up the process during peak hours, they are an effective way to keep lines short and customers happy.

Improved order accuracy

Order accuracy is an essential factor in the customer experience. When an order has to be passed through multiple people on its way from the customer to the kitchen, errors are more likely to occur. Kiosks cut out the middle-man, so orders are transmitted directly from the customer to the appropriate prep station.

Improved productivity

Not only can you control your labor costs, but you can free up staff to engage in more useful activities, without sacrificing service. Kiosks have many time-saving and streamlining features that allow you to optimize workflow and automate routine tasks.

Exceptional service

Kiosks provide added control and more information for customers. If customers have questions, servers will be more readily available to assist them since they aren’t bogged down with transactional tasks. It’s a win/win.

Benefits of a Self-Service Station for Retail

Retailers are faced with unique challenges. The rise of e-commerce has sparked a need for brick-and-mortar retailers to go above and beyond for their customers. Because of this growing need, self-order kiosk has become a useful tool for retailers, for a multitude of reasons:

Bust lines

Online shopping has become so popular because it removes the long lines of physical retail stores. To compete, retailers can leverage self-order kiosks to speed up transactions and allow customers to be on their merry way.

Self-checkout

Self-service stations give customers a greater sense of control over their experience and provide a low-pressure way to make purchases. You can also save on labor costs by allowing the self-order kiosk to take over some more routine simple tasks.

Service expansion

Retailers often waste their labor resources on services that customers could easily handle, such as key cutting, photo processing, and check cashing. If your retail business already offers these services, you can save money by implementing a self-order kiosk. If not, you can add a new service to bring in new customers.

How a Kiosk Ordering System Improves Restaurant and Retail Customer Experiences

Increased speed-of-service and self-checkout

With social distancing of at least 6 feet in restaurants, it’s difficult for employees to take customer orders without errors. Additionally, dining rooms are usually noisy and can make it even harder for staff to quickly and accurately take orders. Even if no errors occur, it takes time for employees to take orders manually and, in some cases, write them by hand.

With a kiosk, orders are placed by the customer and sent directly to the kitchen, speeding up ordering and prep processes. Kiosks can also offer speedy self-checkout so that customers don’t have to wait for the bill, and face-to-face interactions can be kept to a minimum.

Order customization

Kiosks allow customers to get exactly what they want by allowing them to pick and choose items on the kiosk’s display. This nearly eliminates order errors in restaurant settings when staff doesn’t have to act as the middle man by entering orders into a tablet POS or handwriting them. The customer is in complete control and can modify their choices based on their personal preferences. Once a customer finalizes their order, it is sent directly to the kitchen, eliminating the possibility of an order slip being misplaced or forgotten.

In any industry, the key to staying competitive lies in customer experience. You can pull out all the bells and whistles you want, but if your experience is lacking, your profits will be too. Kiosks are one of the easiest and fastest ways to provide improved customer experience, and they offer a great return. If you are looking to boost your customer satisfaction, consider leveraging self-order kiosks for your business.

At NCC, we offer innovative kiosk solutions perfect for any retail or hospitality environment. Are you interested in learning more? Contact us today!