Four Benefits of a Self-Service Kiosk
Long before the pandemic struck, self-service kiosks were growing in popularity. This trend has only continued. In fact, it was reported that the global interactive kiosk market was expected to grow from 24.8 billion in 2019 to 32.8 billion by 2025. That was before COVID. Now, life has been turned on its head. Many business owners are fighting to keep from going under, and times are looking bleak. There’s always a silver lining, though; business owners can now offer better, more optimized services to operate more efficiently post-pandemic. Self-service options are one of those silver linings. The benefits of a self service kiosk are numerous. In fact, business owners have been adopting self-service kiosks faster than ever before for the following reasons:
Safety
The top priority for many business owners right now is simply ensuring the safety of their customers and employees. A pandemic outbreak associated with your business would be detrimental—not just to your reputation, but to the health and wellbeing of the community.
Because of this, it’s imperative that you take proper safety measures. Reducing human-to-human contact is one of the best measures you can take. By implementing self-service kiosks into your business, you are effectively reducing the number of people each customer comes into contact with.
Not only does this help keep customers safe, it gives them better peace of mind. Kiosks send a message: that you are putting the safety of your customers first. But in order to actually deliver on that promise, you will have to take necessary measures to ensure the kiosks stay clean and sanitized.
Make sure you create a cleaning and sanitization schedule, and train your employees well so that everyone stays on the same page when it comes to proper protocols. If you follow the necessary guidelines and procedures, a kiosk can be incredibly effective at keeping your customers and employees safe.
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Saving
COVID-19 has hit business owners hard. Many had to downsize and furlough, causing profits to take a nose dive. For this reason, it’s critical that you do as much as you can to reduce your costs. A self-service kiosk can accomplish this easily and effectively.
Consider just how much of your budget is allocated to labor. In most industries, labor is one of the highest expenses. It doesn’t make sense to waste expensive labor on trivial, mundane tasks that could otherwise be automated.
Kiosks can be used in order to boost productivity while it’s still unsafe or otherwise impossible to keep a full staff on-hand. They never need a break, never need PTO or benefits, and can work round-the-clock. This allows your essential employees to concentrate on tasks that are the most crucial to business operations, and allows you to reallocate labor resources where you need them most.
Streamlining
Your profits are a result of your efficiency. When you work quickly and effectively, you can achieve higher profits than you would with slow, inefficient manual tasks. Technology like self-service checkouts can help increase efficiency within your retail store or restaurant by automating and speeding up these tasks.
For instance, if your customers want to look up inventory, they can easily do it themselves rather than waiting for a staff member. Customers enjoy having more control over their experiences because it allows them to engage more with your business.
If you integrate your kiosk technology with your POS, you can also share data across systems in real time. This allows you to pull data across multiple solutions for a broader overview, and gives you the insight you need to make more informed business decisions.
Selling
Increasing your sales during a time of a pandemic certainly has its challenges. Customers are more careful about spending now, and are less willing to part with their hard-earned dollars unless you are really providing something they want. Business owners need to be smarter about their sales strategies. They need to understand more about what customers want and when they want them, and then center their strategic selling around this information.
Kiosks can act as a natural upselling tool. Sales data can easily be collected. Armed with this data, you can gain a better understanding of what promotions are the most effective and which leave something to be desired. You can then leverage this information to create automated upselling prompts for your kiosks. Offer feature promotions based on current trending items. You can also offer packages, discounts, and other enticing deals so that you can maximize your sales opportunities.
NCC offers a versatile kiosk POS solution that helps keep customers safe and improve their experiences. For more information on the technology offered by NCC and how hit can help you boost your business, contact the experts at NCC today.
