Kiosk Printing Applications

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By Peter Gooding, Customer Applications Team Manager, Zebra Technologies
Kiosks are increasingly prevalent, with hundreds of thousands of new units being deployed each year, in a variety of retail, hospitality, healthcare and other markets. These kiosks are also often increasingly complex, as they incorporate a range of applications, displays, multimedia capabilities and printing options. When deployed in the right manner, however, kiosks are highly effective tools for increasing customer satisfaction, improving sales growth and operations.
 
Zebra kiosk printers for receipts and tickets are now used across a wide range of markets, from retail through leisure and hospitality, to public transport and financial services. Within retail alone, there are a variety of opportunities for retailers to take advantage of the wide range of receipt and ticket printing applications that these solutions can provide.
 
Kiosks can, for instance, be used to print out specific coupons derived from a customer’s loyalty card profile, thus directing spend and customer flow. They can equally provide additional information and guided selling to customers. Kiosks can print out information on stock availability (or stock information) as well as offering the ability to print a comparison of one product’s features against another. Other innovative uses of kiosks include the ability for customers to look up a recipe as they enter a store, then print out an ingredients list that shows the order in which the items can be found in store and where they are located.
 
Kiosk applications apply in many other industries than retail. The public transport industry, for example, can install kiosks at busy stations and terminals that not only generate huge cost savings but also improve the customer experience by reducing waiting times and giving customers the ability to print tickets and full travel itineraries for themselves.
 
As businesses increasingly move towards self-service solutions, companies need to ensure that kiosk applications are as intuitive and reliable as possible. One key aspect related to the printing function is to ensure that the printed information can be easily read and barcodes scanned. If the print quality is not legible, or scanners are not able to read the bar codes, then the kiosk does not fulfill its role. As more applications include small text and barcodes, suppliers need to make sure the printer and media are of the highest quality to provide the reliability customers expect.