Key steps to raise awareness, educate & encourage customers to use self-service kiosks.
The shopping experience is changing globally at an unbelievable rate; with customers able to buy via chat bots, apps, mobile websites, vending machines, kiosks & more – all without ever speaking to a person.
For low value, high volume, convenience based purchases a self-service solution of some sort makes more sense than hand sanitiser after taking public transport.
So here’s the question I’ve been fielding from almost every one of my clients over the past 12 months or more: Why don’t customers use self-service machines?
Outside of Airports & Supermarkets there is a marked trend of kiosk & self-service machines that are under-utilised; with the most common anecdotal feedback that “the only people who’re using these things are kids who think its a game!”.
Here are the top 5 causes that we’ve captured from the banking industry in regards to using the deposit feature on Smart ATMs:
- “I didn’t know I could”
- “I don’t know how”
- “I’m afraid I’ll get it wrong”
- “I don’t trust machines”
- “I prefer human contact, and don’t want that person to lose their job”.
So… what can we do about it?
1. Raise Awareness
- Place the Kiosk in a location that customers can actually see while they’re shopping. Ideally somewhere near the queue, so they can see the time they’d save.
- Choose a self-service solution that LOOKS like a kiosk – putting a touch screen on a wall just looks like a traditional screen – have it in a kiosk enclosure – put up some signage outlining the value proposition & saying ‘Touch Screen’
- Run default animated content on the Kiosk when its not in use; many ATM’s are in idle mode for 95% of the day; lets use that time to highlight the value proposition of the kiosk & encourage usage. Once the product is more mature you can start to swap in promotional content & advertisements.
2. Educate on the Process
- During the early stages of adoption place some staff near the machine to get customers across the line; have them show people how its used and answer questions.
- Educational Content – write the questions & answers that staff & customers have down!
- Digitise those nuggets & build them into some educational content that runs on the device when in Idle mode
3. Encourage Usage
- Discounts & sales through Kiosk
- Highlight time saved in store through Content
- Make the interface familiar to them & easy to use
4. Enforce the process
- Add fee’s or increase prices for appropriate products when purchased over the counter
- At some point you may completely stop servicing that product range over the counter in appropriate environments.
So there you have it; kiosks are about so much more than the software or products you’re offering. You need to leverage traditional & digital methods of communication to facilitate change management for your customers & their current habits.
We’re here to chat if you want some help putting this into practice.