4 Reasons Why a Self-Service Kiosk Will Help Grow Your Business

Everyone wants good customer service. The quality of service has increasingly been reliant on self-service. Ensuring customers’ satisfaction, efficiency, and experience meets their expectations requires smooth interaction and reliable technology.

Enter the self-service kiosk. From multi-floor retail shopping malls to fast-food restaurants, gaming, and casinos on the Las Vegas strip to entertainment venues in New York City's Times Square, self-service kiosks are found just about everywhere. And considering the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a growth in the use of social distancing measures designed to enhance safety and reduce pathogen transmission, it is likely that self-service kiosks will become even more ubiquitous as time goes on amid the new normal.

Is investing in a self-service kiosk, and its accompanying network, something that makes sense for your business?
If you are on the fence or concerned that the popularity of this technology may dissipate eventually, here are a few reasons to make you feel more secure. Bottom line: Self-service kiosks are not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

1. Satisfies Customer's Need for Speed
Next-day shipping, point-and-click shopping, and guaranteed delivery timeframes testify to customers' desire for immediate satisfaction. Self-service kiosks are the epitome of speedy. It may be the single biggest reason why so many organizations are using them, as they can dramatically minimize wait times.

“It is [all] about that speed, convenience, ease — creating that seamless experience for customers,” said Noam Dorros, director analyst at the research firm Gartner, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

"What we've done in Times Square is not the finish line for us," Grams told the WSJ. "It is going to take more time … and this constant evolution in innovation around the restaurant experience, which is just becoming so important."

2. Capable of Performing More Actions Than Ever
Just as self-service kiosks are in expansion mode in terms of industries, they are also able to provide more services above and beyond simple vending. These include queuing, data on inventory (e.g. how many of a specific product are left), and enhanced customization. Additionally, self-service kiosks can assist with identification and verification, as some contain technology that supports facial recognition and artificial intelligence.

The fact that self-service kiosks can do so much may explain why the automated retail market is poised to grow at an annual rate of 11 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to research firm Technavio.

3. Allow for a Better Sense of Safety and Security
As more states dial back certain gathering restrictions that prevent people from congregating, largely due to more Americans obtaining vaccines, some question whether the social distancing measures that several people willingly adopted will become permanent. Despite the significant decline in cases of COVID-19, only a slight majority are comfortable with returning to their old routines that didn't include masking or other safety protocols, according to a Morning Consult poll that involved 2,200 adults.

Depending on the type, many self-service kiosks include technologies that allow people to use them without physically touching them. This is made possible by gesture solution technologies, proximity sensors, and handheld device compatibility. In the latter case, users can operate a kiosk by synching their tablet or smartphone with the kiosk.

4. Advancements in Cellular Network Provide Greater Reliability and Connectivity
As many capabilities a self-service kiosk may have, it is only as good as the network on which it runs. Fortunately, thanks to cellular networking solutions, businesses no longer need to rely on expensive fixed line solutions with high installation construction costs and long wait times for deployments. As self-service vending and kiosks tend to operate inside a separate business that they do not own and have no influence over IT infrastructure, bringing their own wireless 4G LTE network ensures their customer’s experience.

Managed cellular network solutions allow for seamless connections that offer self-service vending and connected retail to stand on their own, so external network outages are not a concern. Cellular is highly reliable and extremely fast, with uptimes exceeding 99 percent with even higher connectivity achieved with dual SIM solutions. Higher uptime means less downtime; less downtime equals happier customers.

Self-service kiosks may have been around for a while, but they have never been more relevant and responsive to people's needs than they are today. Ventus can provide your business with disruption-free support and connectivity for your kiosks. Whether it is the LC100 designed with powerful connectivity in a small package to the all-in-one VRB842 remote power reboot router or the VXI300 powerful cellular to WAN or WWAN, our enterprise-class network routers combine power, functionality, agility, and reliability.

In addition to our hardware, Ventus provides a one-stop-shop for connectivity including pre-configured routers for easy deployments, data plan management across multiple service providers, 24x7x365 monitoring support, and router maintenance to ensure that you can focus on growing your business.

Contact us today to learn more about these and our other offerings.