Part 1 How to Self-Service My Business

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In the first of a two-part special, Deva Mitra lays out the step-by-step questions you need to answer to create the perfect kiosksolution for your business model and your customers.
 
Can I Afford It?

Companies whose products or services lend themselves to digital technologies are now rushing to provide consumers with automated self-service devices that enable their consumers to buy products themselves, from kiosks sited in retail environments. Self-service technology encompasses everything from patient health care kiosks, through kiosks selling retail and entertainment products, to car park ticketing and ordering your food. Businesses are also providing kiosks for their workforces, primarily for communication with their staff – giving them access to the corporate intranet, personnel records and administration.
 
The reason for automation is, on the one hand, to reduce the cost of providing a service, and, on the other, to enable new business opportunities (or safeguard existing ones). For example, take airline check-ins: with the growth of passenger numbers, kiosks enable the industry to cope with more people fl ying, and yet save money at the same time. If, as is estimated, automated check-ins save $2.50 per check-in, with a 40% market penetration  across the world’s airports, airlines stand to save around $1billion per year.
 
So the question is – can you afford not to offer a self-service option to your customers?
 
Will it Work for my Business?
 
It is clear that automated self-service devices can bring savings to a business and extend its reach into its chosen markets. However, the success of the installation depends on customer acceptance, and there is always some customer resistance to new ideas. In all the projects I have been involved with, it has been clear that once initial resistance is overcome, self-service becomes immensely attractive to customers.
 
This is why it is important to plan through the whole project, to have simple workflows that engage the user, to have robust systems, to have clear signage and staff explaining how to use the product – but most importantly to have the retail staff on your side.
 
For example, I was involved with a kiosk pilot in a retail store that was not producing the expected results. Staff members were complaining about the technology and were not helpful to the consumers who wanted to use the kiosks – in fact most days the units were either switched off or had handwritten ‘Out of Order’ signs on them. We then discovered that the turnover generated by the kiosks was not included in the store’s turnover figures. The staff bonuses depended on store turnover. Once that was changed, the kiosk usage shot up dramatically as the staff became helpful and made sure that the consumers got the most out of the kiosks.
 
How do I Plan for Success?
 
Just putting a kiosk on site and leaving it there is not going to make your project a success. You need to encourage people to use it and become familiar with it, by making the interface easy to use and not over-complicating things. You need to work closely with an experienced supplier, and learn from their experiences. Above all, you need to test your offering by running pilots, and learning everything you can from them.
 
Once you have identified a possible project, don’t rush straight off to work out the technical specification and software requirement for the technology – which is what most companies tend to do. This invariably leads to failure. Automated self-service is not an IT initiative to be run by technologists! A successful self-service project will need input from the sales and marketing teams, logistics and fi nance, sometimes HR as well – in other words an automated self service project cuts across and affects all the departments in your company. Indeed, you may want to involve your customers or external stakeholders in the project – after all, they will be involved in placing the units for the pilot. Therefore it becomes an overall corporate, and not just an IT department, decision as to whether or not a project should proceed.
 
Like any other technology-based project in business, there is an evaluation process where a go/no go decision is made (Step 1), followed by developing the technology and choosing the suppliers (Step 2). But before deploying, it is always a good idea to run a pilot (Step 3) and assess the results (Step 4), then deploy (Step 5) as the scope and structure of the deployment may change based on the results of the pilot – after assessment, you might even decide not to go ahead with the whole project.
 
Step 1: Evaluating the Project
 
The key outcome from this step is to get board approval for the project without expending a lot of effort and cost. You may want to create a ‘proof of concept’ at this stage to strengthen the proposition.
 
The ‘first pass’ ROI is the real indicator for whether you should invest more time and effort into the project. As more realistic cost data is obtained, the ROI calculation becomes more real and important. Another indicator could be the ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ but this needs more hard data relating to all the costs, as discussed in Step 2.
 
Once the business case has been made, and budgets/responsibilities allocated, the real fun begins!
 
The answers to these questions will give you the info you need to base your discussions on:

The business (or service) proposition
 
Is it simple – can you, as a business person, clearly understand the proposition? What are the markets? Why would someone want to use the solution? What are the benefits for the consumer/ audience? What are the risks? Can you draw up a ‘pen portrait’ of the typical user groups? Do your customers or external stake holders agree and welcome the benefits that the project can deliver, and can those be set up as the success criteria?

The technology requirement
 
How is the consumer going to interact with the technology? What is the workflow – is it simple or complex? Is the hardware /software off the shelf or will it be customised? Will the kiosk handle cash – if so, will it be secure? Will it use credit cards? What are the safeguards against fraud? How robust will the technology need to be, and where will the unit be sited? Will you need a connection to the internet? What is the support infrastructure? Are there pilot sites selected for testing? Are these sites close by, or are they scattered – if so will you need remote management technology?
 
What is the return on the investment (ROI)?
 
What are the measures to be used? Is the ROI based on turnover, profit, service to stakeholders or increased throughput? What other revenue streams are there? What are the intangible benefi ts? Can you put a value to any of the intangible benefits? Can you get realistic costs for the technology and support? If cash is involved, what is the cost of cash collection? What is the cost of placing the kiosk – i.e. is the cost based on revenue share, flat rate etc? What is the cost of failure?

Step 2: Assessing Technology and Suppliers
 
Once you are satisfied that the project has potential, on paper at least, you need to find experienced suppliers to help with the project. Buying on the cheap, or building the technology yourself, may turn out to be a false economy, as the project will succeed or fail on the reliability and robustness of the offering. Consumers are not patient when it comes to dealing with solution that does not work exactly as it should, 24 hours a day.
 
The first warning you should really take heed of is this: do not be tempted to put your existing e-commerce website on the kiosk! Applications on kiosks tend to be finger-driven, not mouse-driven. For example, buttons have to be large and user-friendly: you could possibly include a soft ‘click’ sound indicating that the button has been pressed.
 
Style may be eye-catching, but ergonomics, especially accessibility, is critical. Do you need to cater for wheelchair users? – in some countries this is a mandatory requirement.
 
Standards are being introduced in some vertical markets and applications, such as the Common Use Self Service (CUSS) in the travel industry. The CUSS standard is to enable airlines to provide passenger facilities at a shared kiosk, and defines how the hardware and software should work. These standards apply to many kiosk applications. If you want your kiosk to handle Chip and Pin, for example, your system must comply with the EMV testing procedure.
 
Some of the issues you will have to deal with once you have decided to proceed with a project include:

The hardware requirement:
 
Will the hardware be sited indoors or outdoors? Are the users going to be using gloved hands? Is the environment dusty? (In both cases the hardware and enclosures will have to meet certain standards, and use different technologies for the touch screen). Are you going to issue a receipt? Then the type of receipt printer, type and width of paper, number and length of cuts on the receipt etc will be relevant. Will your returns policy (if applicable) be printed on the receipt? Will you have customer service telephone numbers printed or will that be on the signage? Will the hardware hold cash? If so how many locks, what type of locks? Will you be using Chip and Pin, in which case you need EMV certification from the card issuers. Enclosures – how much space is available in the store for the kiosk? Do you need a battery backup? What are the serviceability and security issues?

The software requirement
 
What operating system do I need? Will the application software be off the shelf, customised or built from scratch? What is the workflow? How many languages does the application need to support? Can the language files be built in later? Do you develop the complete application or just enough to conduct a pilot? Is the application intuitive? Do you have voice prompts? Do you run screen savers which show advertising, or information on what the kiosk does? What happens if there are problems (like application crashes or locks up) and are there any ‘self heal’ routines built in? What happens if the application crashes in the middle of a transaction, will the user get their money/credit card back? How will the application or system be protected from attacks?
 
Communications
 
Do you need internet access? Will it be broadband or dial-up? If it is dial-up, can it handle the data throughput (like image files)? If it is dial up and you are using it for credit card transactions only, will the ‘wait time’ be acceptable while the unit dials up and connects (which is typically a 10 to 20 sec wait)? Are you using remote management technologies? Does it (or your application) need a fixed IP address? (It can be cheaper if you do not need a fixed IP address)?
 
Support
 
Support will broadly fall into either assistance for the retail staff or user, or fixing hardware/software faults. You need to provision for on-site staff training and, for the fi rst few days, have one of your people to help users acclimatise to the system. Will you be using remote management to monitor the hardware and software for failure, software updates, remote reboots etc? If not, are the pilot sites close, so that if there is a problem or an upgrade needed, your support team can deal with it quickly? What is your support escalation policy? Do you need a ‘returns’ policy for products sold?
 
Site survey
 
You need to do a site survey of the pilot sites, to check out the power sockets, network connections and also any extraneous influences that could affect the performance of the unit – e.g. direct sunlight on the screen making it diffi cult to see the instructions on the screen, or even staff reaction. You will need to decide on the sort of signage you will need, and ensure that the unit is not tucked away and hidden from the normal throughways – you need the unit to be clearly visible to anyone who comes into the area. You need to be sure that the site chosen will deliver the agreed success criteria.

Total Cost of Ownership
 
The Total Cost of Ownership is one of the most important measures to compare product offerings from different suppliers, and it infl uences the ROI. The cost of you creating the complete technology in-house may be cheaper to start with, but will be more expensive in the long run, as you will probably not have catered for all the issues associated with placing technology in the unpredictable hands of the general public. This is one area where it makes a lot of sense to rely on the experience of your suppliers.

Test, test, test; and then test some more
 
The system has to be completely ‘consumer proof ’. If there are any fl aws or weaknesses in the technology you deploy, the consumers will fi nd them and, in turn, the retail management will get to know them too, which may negatively affect the outcome of the pilot. It is also very expensive to fi x faults in devices already deployed at retail sites, with added loss of credibility. Create and document a plan for testing the application and hardware, ensuring ‘disaster’ contingencies are envisaged and handled by the technology. Log your testing against the plan. Do not take the easy road and let your consumers do your testing for you, as, not only will your project unravel, but your brand may suffer as a consequence.
 
And Finally…
 
In conclusion, remember that Murphy’s Law is always alive and well– assume the worst, learn from your pilot, have clear signage explaining what the device does and what the benefi ts are for the consumer – and with a fair wind you may well have a fantastically successful and profitable new revenue stream.
 
In our next issue we will be looking at the final three steps –Pilot, Analysis and Deployment; including real life examples of why some installations were successful and why some went wrong, plus a quick look at some that failed to take off, with experiences and comments from both the supplier and user communities.
 
I know it all seems like an awful lot of questions (with very few answers!) but you have to remember that a self-service project is only ever successful when it delivers the exact requirements of its customers, so you can’t afford to skip a single question if you want to give your customers all the answers!
 
You will find all the answers to your questions (and a few more besides) at KIOSK EUROPE EXPO 2007, but, until then, we’ll continue this seminar with steps 3-5 in the Summer issue, so make sure you keep your subscription up to date!

SELF-SERVICE LESSONS TO BE LEARNT
 
“The worst thing to do with a self-service project is to consider it as an exercise in IT. It should be a businessdriven project with a very convinced sponsor. Failing to do this will just leave you with loads of pilots in your stores - nice to have but without any positive ROI for your business. The second most important thing is to build clear, measurable success metrics before you even begin. And last, but not least, you need to speed up the roll-out to stay ahead of the course and beat your competition. You just need to dare!”
 
Philippe MARXGUT, Customer Care Director, CIT / Groupe CASINO
 
Since 2004, Groupe Casino has rolled out more than 300 self-service checkouts in their hypermarket stores all over France, and are now moving the concept into their supermarkets.