The self-service payment kiosks have become common these days. A variety of different businesses and service sector is adopting self-service solutions to ensure a smoother and seamless customer journey while leveraging the modern technologies and AI (artificial intelligence) based smart solutions. The service industry is heavily relying upon human resource, but since past few years, businesses have started recognizing the potential of self-service solutions. The self-service payment kiosks is a modern form of interactive kiosks. Retail, food, hospitality, and government sector is rapidly adopting interactive self-service payment kiosks. A self-service payment kiosk not only simplify the payment process but also offers a tons of features which enhance and improve customer experience.
The capabilities of the interactive self-service payment kiosks and sensitive nature of tasks which it can perform makes them more important. Thus it is crucial to choose a right self-service payment kiosk for your business. There are several vendors and suppliers offering a variety of different self-service payment kiosk and such solutions which makes it difficult for the businesses and organizations to choose the right kiosk. In this blog we will discuss how you can chose a right self-service payment kiosk.
How to Choose a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk for your Business?
What is a Self-Service Payment Kiosk?
A self-service payment kiosks is similar to an ordinary interactive self-service kiosk but with additional features to take bill payment, credit/debit cards, coins and even ability to accept payment via digital payment channels. You can find many examples of self-service payment kiosk around you such as the kiosk at bus and metro stations to recharge your NOL Cards, the kiosk at parking lots to pay parking fees, bill payment kiosks, food & good vending machines and many more. Businesses, private organizations and government sector is actively implementing self-service payment kiosks to enhance their customers’ experience and to leverage the extraordinary benefits of digitalization and automation.
One of the biggest advantage of a self-service payment kiosk is that it makes services more accessible, and it allow businesses and organizations to use their resources in something more productive and important while ensuring their customers will have a great experience and easy access to their services via interactive self-service kiosks. The interactive self-service payment kiosks can operate 24/7 which make them more accessible. Furthermore the businesses and organizations can greatly increase their reach to targeted markets, as deploying and managing interactive self-service payment kiosk is much more convenient and cost-effective then opening up new branches and offices.
What is a Self-Service Payment Kiosk?
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Self-Service Payment Kiosk
Different businesses have different needs, they offer different kind of services. Even in a similar industry different businesses tend to offer different user experience, and this is something that makes them unique and could also gain them competitive advantage. However, when it comes to deploy a self-service payment kiosk, there are several factors that are important to consider such as:
- User Experience and User Interface
- Security and Data Protection Features
- Integration with Existing Systems
- Administration and Reporting
- Customization
- Support and Maintenance
- Compliance
The self-service solutions are becoming more popular both businesses and customers are praising them for the level of convenience and control these solutions offers. The traditional service methods are gradually losing their importance, people are becoming more tech savvy, especially in a region like UAE where the technology and internet is widely available to all. Businesses in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and in other emirates are proactively seeking ways to leverage digitalization and modernization for their growth and customer excellence. Same is the case with the self-service payment kiosks, if you want to get full benefits of the technology you must make sure you are choosing the right kiosk, which means you are choosing the right features and technical specs which match with your specific business needs.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Self-Service Payment Kiosk
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: User Experience and User Interface
The user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are one of the most important and crucial factor to consider when deploying a self-service payment kiosk. The user experience will determine the level of customer satisfaction and the customer satisfaction is the direct measure of the success of you self-service payment kiosk. Therefore it is extremely important to carefully thought about these two aspects and define your goals. The UI or user interface is the touch point where your customers will interact with the self-service payment kiosk system. It will be a touch screen which will be running a software, allowing users to interact with the system and perform several tasks.
As in UAE a large population consists of expats form several different countries, so having a multi-lingual user interface (UI) could be a great help for the users and it can tremendously enhance customer experience. Furthermore the on-screen instructions and even audio guides can be added to elevate customer satisfaction. A better optimized user interface enable users to easily navigate through different features and perform the payment tasks. The multi-lingual UIs, guidance well-crafted navigational structure can be very helpful in improving customer experience and raising customer satisfaction.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: User Experience and User Interface
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Security and Data Protection Features
Security and Data Protection have paramount importance, whether it is your Self-Service Payment kiosk or an online portal, whenever the customers are required to make payments, which means sharing sensitive information, the biggest concerns of the customers is the security and data protection. A self-service payment kiosk can offer multiple payment methods including:
- Payment via Credit/Debit Card
- Cash Deposit or Currency Bills (Coins and Cash Return Features)
- Online Payment Gateways
- Contactless Payment
- Digital Payment Methods such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc.
The customers can pay using multiple methods, hence it is crucial to ensure that whatever payment mode you are offering your self-service payment kiosk is equipped with adequate security features. Such as anti-spam protection, anti-theft features, secure and encrypted data communication, etc. Along with these security features you should also make sure that the user data you are capturing from the customers is also well-preserved, protected and stored with great care. You can also setup multiple backups for your data in your cloud hosting or in your on-premises servers. There are several network security and server side security application which will add more layers of protection for customer’s sensitive data. It is important that you work on the security and data protection features thoroughly to gain your customer’s trust and satisfaction.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Security and Data Protection Features
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Integration with Existing Systems
Integration is one of the most important factor while implementing a new software-based solution. In case of interactive self-service payment kiosk, since there are several workflows that involves, you are not just taking payments, you are also offering services which could be managed by different teams, and even departments. Hence an inter-connected network and synchronized communication is a key to robust and seamless operation. This can only be achieved by enabling integration or third-party system integration. Both terms means the same. The integration or third-party integration allow a system/software to interact with other systems, software and databases to synchronize data in real-time.
For example, you are offering a service, the customer comes in, make a payment for the renewal of the subscription via interactive self-service payment kiosk. The protocols suggests that the customer should immediately receive the confirmation SMS, and email with the payment details and receipt and the customer portal and mobile app should immediately reflect the payment. All these tasks are traditionally managed by different systems, hence a communication is enabled between all these system so the interactive self-service payment kiosk can notify each system automatically to complete the workflow and this can be done in a completely autonomous way, without requiring any input from staff which usually cause delays. That is why the third-party system integration is a must have feature for self-service payment kiosk.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Integration with Existing Systems
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Administration and Reporting
I am working in tech industry for past 10 years, the one thing that I noticed a lot is that most of the time when businesses are seeking to design or deploy a ready-made system all of their focus is on the frontend of the system. Businesses mostly undermine the importance of the backend/back-office or administration dashboard which is basically the control and command center of a system or solution. It is important to understand how the administration and management has to be done to achieve maximum productivity and higher performance. The administration panel or dashboard of a self-service payment kiosk is simply a kiosk management software. This is usually a server side application manages and control all connected self-service payment kiosk.
A standard kiosk management software comes with dashboards and control panels, which allow businesses to create workflows aligned with their internal processes, update and manage information on the user interface of the self-service payment kiosk, and it allow them to perform many other tasks. Furthermore there are tools to collect and analyze system usage, statistical and analytical data which help producing valuable business intelligence. The data collected can be extracted in forms of reports, hence it is crucial to understand what data you want to capture, in what form and format and what way you want to generate the reports to ensure they can be used effectively in decision making process. Hence it is important to consider the features and tools for administration and reporting.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Administration and Reporting
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Customization
Now a days businesses all over the UAE are realizing the importance of customization. The market studies are suggesting that businesses are becoming more inclined towards the custom software development, rather than preferring off-the-shelf or ready-made solutions. The customization is one of the most important feature considering the rapidly evolving market landscape. It will allow you to incorporate your unique and very specific needs, customized branding and much more. Now a days, the technology is evolving rapidly, and in fact the overall markets and customer trends could be much unpredicted. Which sometime demand customization to align with the new needs. There are two types of customization, one is the application level, which means your internal team, and vendor or any outsourcing partner take your software or application and make changes to its core with programing and coding. Then there is a minor type of customization which means to have onboard features and tools which allow you to modify the processes, workflows, content, and overall working of the software application that you are using.
For example, in case of self-service payment kiosk you can enable Emirates ID based authentication for certain customers and for others you can set QR Code scanning to identify them. Similarly right now you might not have a reward program, in future you want to integrate it or maybe you wish to collect customer feedback at the end of the transaction, etc. Therefore it is important to have a self-service payment kiosk that support with your customization needs and will remain compatible with your future needs.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Customization
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Support and Maintenance
For any system or solution a business must require good support and maintenance. There are several great products available in the market, but the vendors or distributors doesn’t offer good support to businesses which sometimes could cause unimaginable setbacks and interruptions. Such scenarios can immediately impact your customer experience and could be very disruptive for the operations. Thus having a great support and maintenance services is a must. Whenever you are choosing a vendor for your customized or off-the-shelf self-service payment kiosk, you must enquire for their maintenance and support services. Usually the interactive kiosks are very rigid and have high-endurance, however, it is crucial to have a great AMC and SLA to prevent off-times. It is always good to contact some of the existing customers of your vendor and enquire them about their services.
You should also carefully study the annual maintenance contracts (AMC) and service level agreements (SLA) to ensure you will be getting a great after-sale support and maintenance service from the vendor. The availability of the parts and response time is important too. If your interactive self-service payment kiosk will go offline or have functional problems, it will affect your customer experience and you could lose valuable sales. In long term your relationships with customers will also get impacted, so it is crucial to have a great support and maintenance service when choosing a self-service payment kiosk vendor.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Support and Maintenance
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Compliance
Adhering to industry-specific and local regulations is not just a legal obligation but it is absolutely essential to gain your customer’s trust and ensure their satisfaction. Especially when you are collecting payments or allowing your customers to make transactional tasks form your self-service payment kiosk it is more important to ensure you are meeting each standard and complying with local and government’s regulations. These regulations and industry standards could vary from the prospective of the application and the place of deployment. For example, if you are only offering credit/debit card payment, then you doesn’t required ATM grade kiosk body/frame, but if you are collecting cash then you must require a strong kiosk body with anti-theft features and you must also take certain certifications and approvals (if needed).
However, if you are placing a self-service interactive kiosk in a shopping mall, where there are security cameras everywhere, the security guards are available all the time, then you might not need as many physical traits to make it strong and fool proof. However, if you are installing your self-service payment kiosk on a high-way, or in a remote place, and in outdoor, then you cannot use the same kiosk, you must have to make sure your kiosk body/frame is strong enough and meet all the standards, you must add anti-theft features and CCTV security cameras to gain customer’s trust.
Choosing a Right Self-Service Payment Kiosk: Compliance
Conclusion
Choosing a right self-service payment kiosk for your business is not a matter of using the right specs, but it is a strategic decision which could have huge impact on customer experience and customer satisfaction. Thus this decision requires a thorough study of several factors and then based upon your exclusive business needs you should chose all the right features for your self-service payment kiosks. A self-service payment kiosk doesn’t only impact the customer experience but it is capable of effectively improving the performance and increasing operational effectiveness. In this blog we have discussed several important factors which a business must consider to ensure they are choosing the best solution.
As every business have different needs, priorities and goals, therefore all these factors should be analyzed carefully to ensure that all your business needs are met effectively. I hope this blog will be very helpful. If you still need some help or if you want to highlight any other important aspect which I haven’t covered in this blog, please feel free to get in touch with us through the below comment box or you can also contact us through our Contact Us page. If you need our help to assist you with your self-service payment kiosk project, please feel free to get in touch with us.