5 Reasons Why Retail Stores Should Be Using Interactive Kiosks
Interactive touchscreen kiosks have revolutionized the customer experience and continue to grow in popularity. Interestingly, the global interactive kiosk market is expected to grow at 6.9 percent CAGR in the forecast period 2021-2028 and reach 45.32 billion USD by 2028. This is about double the current market size, showing the technology’s enormous potential.
What Is an Interactive Kiosk?
An interactive kiosk is a computer station or terminal set up with specialized hardware and management software to make self-service easy. The kiosk will be running on specialized kiosk software, and customers will interact with it through the multi-point touchscreen interface on the LCD display.
Through a user-friendly interface, these digital kiosks provide access to data and apps for commerce, such as in retail stores. The self-service kiosks are versatile and commonplace in other industries, including education, healthcare, and entertainment. Additionally, they are very popular in the food service industry, especially among quick service restaurants (QSR.)
As a result, interactive kiosks can be wall-mounted or freestanding. The freestanding kiosk solutions design comprises countertop tablets, pole-mounted and floor-standing kiosks.
Data on Interactive Kiosks
One study shows that the shift from a traditional point-of-service system to a self-service kiosk increased the average order size by over 15%. These kiosks can connect to the internet through Wi-Fi or LAN, adding to them the versatility to act as interactive digital signage displays. The display content is easy to customize, and you can carry out all updates remotely. The content needs to be attention-grabbing and highly engaging to encourage customers to interact with the kiosks.
Customers provide crucial information about themselves, their purchase preferences, and their customer experience when they interact with these digital kiosks. This is often through filling out forms and participating in in-store surveys. Such information includes contact details such as email addresses and telephone numbers. So, as a business, you can use this contact information to reach out to customers with promotions and other marketing material later.
Similarly, you can capture crucial information about the demographic profile of your customers. This includes age and gender. With this data, you can better understand who makes up your customer base and adjust your business model to meet their needs.
Again, you can run surveys on customer experience through the interactive kiosks. Users can share their issues and any pain points encountered in their customer journey. This and recommendations for improvements can help you to make your processes better and deliver a great user experience.
Interactive Kiosks and Higher Sales
Rest assured that interactive kiosks are a worthy investment that will give you a good return on your investment. It is also great that these units have a high durability profile, and you don’t have to worry about high operations and maintenance costs.
For instance, retail businesses can look forward to increasing sales when they invest in interactive kiosks. Here is a look at how and why these kiosks can help to drive up your sales numbers.
1. Powerful Advertising Tool
Multi-touch kiosks are designed to grab attention at retail stores or trade shows. The digital display is a great tool to showcase your offerings and run various advertisements. Unlike static ads, the multimedia content displayed on the kiosks is very dynamic and highly engaging.
Therefore, customers can quickly browse through your brochure on your kiosk display and even watch video demos of how your various offerings work. They can select a product on your brochure and get a simulated look at what the product would look like in their home setting. With peripheral devices such as a barcode scanner, customers quickly check-up and compare prices of your offerings.
2. Better Understanding of Customer Behavior
Digital kiosks provide helpful information about your customer behavior. This includes but isn’t limited to buying preferences and overall customer habits and trends. You can use this information to better understand your customer’s preferences and adjust your business model and marketing strategy. Consequently, you can develop and share more targeted promotions to drive your sales.
For example, you can use the data acquired to create exciting packages and product bundles comprising the products they commonly purchase together. Indeed, even your staff may be unable to up-sell or cross-sell your interactive kiosk. Similarly, you can use information about products with the highest demand to adjust your inventory levels accordingly, so you never have a supply shortage.
3. Better User Experience
Customer satisfaction that comes with a great customer experience is a sure way to increase your repeat customer numbers and sales. Digital kiosks help to deliver a great experience in several ways.
First, you want to make it easy for your customers to find their way into your store. Interactive kiosks and building directories can be excellent wayfinding tools if your store is in a mall or building with other businesses.
Secondly, these kiosks allow you to leverage the preference of most people to avoid human interaction as much as possible. The kiosk will serve as an information kiosk and provide customers with any informational resources they may need regarding your products and your processes.
Similarly, you can have check-in kiosks, vending, and bill payment kiosks, making it possible for customers to complete various transactions independently. So, if you streamline your systems so each transaction runs smoothly, you can be sure customers will be happy to come back again.
Likewise, you can greatly reduce perceived wait times with interactive kiosks. Your waiting customers can select short videos and other infotainment content, and the wait times will not seem as long.
4. Staying on Brand
First impressions matter a lot in business, and having interactive kiosks in your retail store will certainly give your business that modern look and feel. Even more important is that you can use these digital kiosks to strengthen your brand. Ensure your brand voice really comes out in the content you display in the kiosks. Also, let your logo display in the background as customers interact with the kiosks, even when idle.
Actually, brand consistency can translate to up to a 33% increase in revenue. If you can maintain brand consistency across various channels, including your enterprise digital signage, you can be sure customers will have an easier time remembering their experience with your business. If it’s ingrained in their minds, rest assured that they will just as easily walk into your store whenever they see your logo. Get more traffic into your stores and look forward to more sales.
5. Time Saver for Employees
Interactive kiosks take self-service to the next level. This is great for improving business efficiencies since it saves employees a lot of time. Your sales team will spend less time providing customers with information, taking orders, and processing payments. As such, they can dedicate more of their time to helping drive sales up by giving more one-on-one time to customers who may need more complex help or prefer human interaction.
Custom Interactive Kiosks
Find out more about the capabilities of these kiosks in the guide to modern interactive kiosks. The good news is that these digital kiosks are high integration-friendly. Consequently, you can connect the kiosks to various systems and services. These include check-in and check-out, ordering, wayfinding, payment processing, weather and news, social media, and so much more. Ultimately, it comes down to what you want to achieve with your interactive kiosks.
See Your Numbers Grow
As outlined, interactive kiosks are a highly effective tool for improving customer experience and marketing, which will help drive up your sales numbers. Additionally, these are all benefits you can surely enjoy for a long time.
