When looking at ways to make the most out of your physical selling space throughout such a busy period, the interactive kiosk provides huge business benefits – and those benefits don’t end when the Christmas season does. Now we see kiosks in department stores, banks, fast-food chains and airports, to name a few. So, what are their direct benefits and why get them up and running well before December arrives?
Promote Product Benefits
Kiosks help businesses smoothly convey their products’ most valuable features and unique benefits at a glance. Instead of overwhelming the customer with a myriad of features, the kiosk can make your product stand out, highlighting how it best meets the customer’s real needs (or wants) and laying the groundwork for a completed purchase.
Reduce Waiting Time
Customer patience has diminished and levels are even lower in the lead up to Christmas. Regardless of industry, many customers are deterred from in a never-ending line to pay for an item, or find out more about a product. Self-service kiosks tackle these problems. Convenient for customers, they decrease waiting times without adding staff costs, reducing, or even eliminating, the number of customers lost because of queues, or unavailable salespeople.
Explore Options And Customise Products
Kiosks give your customers immediate access to explore a wide array of products, whether or not they are displayed on the shop floor. Their convenience is again appealing, as they provide an information point where they can take their time perusing a product range. Customers appreciate being able to view customisation options and not being rushed into making a purchase. Enabling your customer to browse at their own pace, especially during such a fast-paced shopping season, encourages exploration and can even lead them to purchase other products that they hadn’t initially planned to buy.
Help Staff Answer Questions
With a mass of in-depth information accessible, customers can find on-demand answers to the majority of questions they have about product. Equally, salespeople can use kiosks to support their own product knowledge. When interacting with customers that have detailed questions, staff can use the wealth of information to help answer them and finalise the sale. This helps support employees that have been hired to meet the demand of the shopping weeks, or months, before Christmas.
Increase Your Salespeople’s Efficiency
With in-store kiosks, your salespeople can work more efficiently and provide a better customer service, which will help bring in more sales. As well as increasing your salespeople’s knowledge base, kiosks give your customers the option to serve themselves where possible, freeing up your staff to help customers who have complex queries. Customers who would like to checkout or find basic information can do so quickly. This means more sales, as more customers are served.
Takeaway
At such a demanding time of year for many businesses, kiosks complement the strengths of your staff, while providing an innovative way of meeting your customer needs. They can be valuable in creating new revenue opportunities and retaining customers through reduced waiting times, therefore, increasing the number of customers served. Regarding their self-service kiosks, Lisa McComb, McDonald’s spokesperson, has said, “Similar to ordering from an app, the technology…offers additional service options, giving customers the ability to control the way they wish to experience and engage with McDonald’s.” Giving customers the flexibility to interact with your business in the way that suits them best will create a customer-friendly environment. Ensuring the best possible customer experience, at a time when many people don’t want to be shopping for hours on end, will reassure your customer that you are catering to their best interests. With trust established between the customer and your brand, you will see how kiosks ultimately drive sales.