Businesses always seek ways to improve customer satisfaction, increase their productivity and efficiency to maximize profitability and to ensure a long term sustainable growth. It is very true that the customer satisfaction provides a foundation at which business can grow. Furthermore it is also important that businesses understand that there is a cost associated to better customer service and product quality. They need to find a balance between the expense and the quality of outcome.
This is where the businesses look towards technology and digital solutions. The technology minimize the cost, offer excellent value and enhance productivity and operational capabilities of a business. Businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE have started adopting to self-service solutions since more than a decade now. Over the time the technology improved, the self-service solutions also got better. Now a days, the self-service kiosk are considered to be an integral part of customer satisfaction strategy.
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One of the most common type of self-service kiosk is the ATM machine. We all are also familiar with the refreshment vending machines and the mobile top-up kiosks, these kiosks are very common in Dubai and all around the UAE. The self-service kiosks are serving millions of customers on daily bases across several industries. Different businesses are using the self-service kiosks differently, for example, the government sector is majorly using them to offer information and basic services, the event management industry is using them for self-service registration portals, the HR sector is using it to offer HR services (usually off-campus), the facility management are using them to offer self-service wayfinding portals, the service sector is using self-service kiosks, the retail industry is using to offer self-service checkout and many more. Here are some key benefits of the self-service kiosks which any business can use to gain a greater competitive advantage.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Improves Customer Experience
Customer experience is one of the most important aspect of a successful business strategy. Satisfied customers tend to be more loyal towards the business, they are good brand advocate, they tend to tolerate more bad interactions, and they do repeated business and help businesses sustain growth. The customer experience depends on several factors, one of the most important factor is the customer wait time, and if customers will have to wait longer then they will get annoyed and frustrated which have huge impact on customer satisfaction and customer happiness.
The self-service kiosk offer quicker operation, self-service features and 24/7 availability. The kiosk can maximize the customer engagements and it can provide in-depth product information which help customers to acquire information very quickly. Since the self-service kiosk doesn’t require any assistance form the staff, the customers can have more freedom and control during their interaction.
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These days in Dubai and all across the UAE the use of interactive kiosks is very common, so much so that most of the time the customers expect from the business to offer a self-service interactive kiosk or any other form of digital interaction. Of course the human interaction is important too, but the digital interaction offers more freedom, confidence and flexibility to the customers. Businesses can also offer personalized customer experience at their self-service interactive kiosk.
The self-service interactive kiosk comes with a powerful software tool, which can offer a personalized experience based on past customer interactions, their preferred products/services, and a lot of other analytical data. This ensures the customers are catered with the information, products and services they would be interested in. The system can also personalized the customer experience based on customer persona, their preferences and business strategies.
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The self-service interactive kiosks comes with intuitive user interfaces which also help improving customer experience. As here in UAE there are multiple nationalities and ethnicities which means your customer base would be very diverse. Communicating and interacting with such customers in their preferred language could be very difficult. If businesses wants to enhance their experience they might have to hire a lot of service agents to maximize their language capabilities.
However, with an interactive self-service kiosk businesses can easily integrate multiple languages without hiring special staff and interpreters. All those languages can be added to the system with only one time cost, there would be no impact on the operational expenses. This can provide a great advantage and it can increase customer engagements too. With the help of the interactive self-service kiosks businesses can easily offer personalized experience to maximize the customer satisfaction and customer happiness.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Offers 24/7 Availability
The lifestyle in Dubai and all around the UAE is very fast-paced. People don’t have much time to spare, everyone is busy and have schedules. In such lifestyle it become difficult to take time to visit a customer service center or a business. There are a variety of problems when you invite your customers to visit to your service center or business. For example, the first thing is the timing, each business or service center have fixed timings. When customers decide to visit a business or a service center, they will have to travel to there, then they will have to wait in waiting lines, sometimes the queues can get longer and take a lot of time. Which badly impact customer experience and cause frustration and stress. Another problem is that business usually have limited service centers/branches, it is very expensive to open a new branch.
However, the interactive self-service kiosk can operate 24/7, they don’t bound customers to visit only during the office hours or standard operating hours. The can cater to customers 24/7 and the deployment and operating cost is also very low.
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On top of that the interactive self-service kiosks can be placed at several places, opening up new branch or service center very expensive and complicated, however placing an interactive kiosk is very cost-efficient and easy. That is why the 24/7 availability of service offers excellent customer experience and higher customer satisfaction. The customers can visit there anytime they want, there will be no queue, and they will be served instantly. The reduction in wait time itself is a great advantage, and it can significantly improve customer experience.
The customers are interacting with a digital system, hence they can spend as much time as they want on the digital counter/kiosk. They can chose their preferred language, they can have access to all information and they feel more freedom while interacting through a digital channel or medium such as interactive self-service kiosk. Offering 24/7 service not only satisfy your customers but it also add value to the brand image and brand reputation.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Digitalization Drives Efficiency
The interactive self-service kiosks comes with a powerful software which is integrated with internal systems and central information center. This enables the system to offer services via a self-service mode. As the self-service operation doesn’t require interaction with the human staff so the customers should be provided with all the necessary information to be able to take them through the process and improve their success rate. That is very important, because if the customers start failing at the interactive self-service kiosk they would start complaining about it.
Large number of complains and unhappy customers can easily overwhelmed your customer support and service teams and would cause additional problems. That is why all the services and the delivery mechanisms are transformed to support the self-service mode. Sometimes businesses might have to remodel their internal processes and service delivery mechanisms to ensure the customers can easily get the service via a self-service mode.
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The digitalization of the services and improvements in the internal processes results in better efficiency and higher productivity. The digitalization drives innovation and automation, in fact the self-service solutions are all about achieving autonomy. Deploying an interactive self-service kiosk solution not only enable businesses to offer services in an automated way, but this automation also automates several service delivery steps and improve all internal processes as well. Such changes increase productivity and efficiency and improve performance.
This is due to the integration of several systems and converging all the data and information to a single portal. The same processes and changes can be deployed to the core processes that are being used by the service agents and other staff. Which will also help reducing their workload and reduce the efforts required for a particular task. Hence the productivity and efficiency of the entire business can be significantly improved.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Reduce Cost and Maximize Profitability
The interactive self-service kiosk is a very cost-effective solution, it consists of a software application and a hardware kiosk machine. Creating the self-service kiosk software is just a one-time cost, and the hardware have longer lifecycle and can be used for many years without any significant maintenance. This means that the interactive self-service kiosk can offer excellent ROI. Furthermore the per-service cost can be significantly less comparing to the customer service centers.
The interactive self-service kiosk can support business growth, businesses can deploy these kiosks in their targeted locations and regions to extend their services to the customers in those regions and this also help acquiring more customers and generating revenue. Opening up a new branch or regional office is a very expensive feat, it is complicated, time consuming and required a lot of resources, whereas deploying a kiosk will just cost you a fraction of that. That is why the self-service kiosk can be great tool to support your growth.
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Businesses also deploy interactive self-service kiosks in their service centers. Usually businesses hire more staff when their footfall increases. Hiring more staff and developing training programs for them can cost a lot. Here in Dubai and all around the UAE most of the general consumers are very well-versed with the technology, and most of the people prefer self-service. When businesses deploy interactive self-service kiosks at their premises, they can divert a lot of customers from the service counters towards the self-service kiosks. Which not only enhance customer experience but also help reducing the workload of the staff and also eliminates the need of hiring new staff.
In fact even if you don’t need to hire more staff you can still deploy self-service kiosks to balance the workload of the employee and allow them to focus on more important tasks. If we compare an interactive self-service kiosk with an employee, they are very cost-efficient and they can work 24/7 without any break. This maximize the efficiency while also reduce the cost in hiring or retaining more staff and increase profitability of the business.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Remote Management and Instant Updates
The interactive self-service kiosks comes with a powerful information management system software. The software is basically a server side application, which manages the data, take commands from the users, follow the company policies and workflow and ensures a quicker and smoother service delivery. The front-end part is the user interface (UI), the UI allow the customers to interact with the system through the interactive self-service kiosk’s touch screen.
It also allow them to perform several tasks, such as scanning their Emirate ID, taking photos, printing documents, making cash payments or payments via credit/debit card or any other supportive method, take prints, scan QR codes, and several other functions that are required to deliver the service. There is another section of the software which is called the back-office or administrative dashboard. The administrative dashboard provide access to configurations, settings, information, data bases and other features of the system.
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The server software is always hosted online or on company network and the kiosks serve as a client to that server and also on the same network or online to communicate with the server. Usually the administrative control panel is provided to the head-office, regional offices and any other concerned person who is responsible for managing the system. This means that each time when a customer interacts with the system through the interactive self-service kiosk, all the data is stored on the server. The interactive self-service kiosk server is integrated with other relevant systems and databases such as customer database, financial system, inventory management, etc.
Hence the information and data can also be updated on all other connected systems to ensure the consistency and to eliminate the repeated work and confusions. Furthermore the information on the kiosk can also be management through in-built dedicated modules and can be updated on each individual kiosk or all of them simultaneously and in real-time. Hence there is no delay or gap between the kiosk and any other relevant system.
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Interactive Self-Service Kiosk: Offers a Wide Range of Functionalities
An interactive self-service kiosk is a highly customizable machine. It is built on a widely available hardware which also make it very cost-effective. Especially since past decade, the manufacturers have invested a lot in the R&D of the interactive technologies. This led to highly innovative and advanced technological solutions. Basically the interactive self-service kiosk consists of a computer module, which act as the main brain of the kiosk.
There is a touch screen display which let users interact with the user interface (UI) of the systems. Obviously the touch screen alone is not enough for a lot of services, so there are other peripherals are added to achieve the desired functionalities. Here are some generic functionalities that can be offered by an interactive self-service kiosk:
- Navigating through dashboards and web pages via touch screen & on-screen keyboard
- Input data and information using physical track pad and a physical keyboard
- Connectivity via LAN, WiFi and 3G/4G connections
- Print Receipts via thermal printer or a full-size (A4) printer
- Scan and print documents via standard size scanner and an A4 size printer
- Scan RFIDs, QR Codes, Barcodes, Passport and Boarding Passes
- Integrated Retina Scanners, Facial Recognition, Thermal Camera & CCTV Security Camera
- Make payments with cash and coins with dedicated cash and coin accepting modules
- Make payments with credit/debit cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, online payment gateways, etc.
- Build customized vending machines for merchandise and small size items
- Integrated special peripherals, sensors and hardware accessories to meet exclusive needs
These are some of the most widely used functionalities and hardware devices that can be integrated in an interactive self-service kiosk. Businesses can use any of the above or a combination of the above to achieve their required functionalities to maximize the customer experience.
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A great benefit of the interactive self-service kiosk is that it is highly customizable. Which means businesses have a lot of room for innovation and they can offer highly advanced features to their customers to enhance the customer experience. Here are some industries who are rapidly adopting to interactive self-service kiosk systems and solutions:
- Banking and Financial Sector
- Government Departments and Ministries
- Utility Service Providers
- Facility Management and Real Estate Businesses
- Healthcare Sector
- Educational Institutions
- HR Sector
- Public Offices
- Food and Hospitality Industries
- Transport Sector
- Airports, Ports and Immigration Departments
- Telecommunication Sector
- Retail Industry
- Events and Exhibition Management Sectors
- Marketing, Communication and Entertainment Sectors
These are some of the major industries that are embracing interactive self-service kiosks. Listing all businesses and their types is not relevant to our subject. The above list is to show how wide spread the technology is and how many different types of businesses are using interactive self-service kiosk systems.
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Conclusion
Businesses from various industry sectors are rapidly adopting to modern technologies and solutions to enhance their customer experience and to maximize the productivity and profitability. The interactive self-service kiosk system is also one of those modern technologies that is embraced by almost all industry sectors. Businesses located in Dubai or anywhere in UAE knows very well that the customer demands are very high in UAE market and the competition is very tough. In such scenarios the customer experience and the customer happiness matters the most. In order to delight the customers, businesses offers a variety of products and services, the customer self-service is one of them. It helps improving customer experience and gain their loyalty. The interactive self-service kiosk solutions are available 24/7 offer excellent user experience with multi-lingual and intuitive user interfaces. The interactive kiosks offer a variety of features and hardware compatible devices which help businesses innovate new solutions to maximize the customer satisfaction.
The interactive self-service kiosk system also offers a powerful software which help businesses digitalize and automate several services, internal processes and workflows. The automation improves efficiency and also have positive impact on employee performance as the self-service kiosks and the automation help reducing the workload of the staff. Which also help businesses in improving the efficiency and it is also very helpful in optimizing and reducing the operational cost. The interactive self-service kiosks are the modern day’s solution for the ever growing customer satisfaction needs of the businesses. RSI Concepts is a leading interactive self-service kiosk solution provider in Dubai, UAE. If you want to learn more about the subject or if you want us to help you build a tailor-made interactive self-service kiosk solution please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.
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