Why Customers Like Self-Service
by Juan Perez, president and chief technology officer, Adusa, Inc.
June 1, 2006 – We know that more and more customers are using self-service in retail; the evidence
is all around us. But what are some of the factors that compel customers to use selfservice
on a routine basis?
Many years ago, the retail world was anything but self-service. If you wanted
something, you had to ask the store clerk to physically retrieve it for you from the
shelves behind the counter. Then stores implemented self-service and customers
could retrieve their own items from shelves or racks throughout the store. This form
of self-service was one of the primary reasons the retail industry grew to trillions of
dollars annually by 2000. But there remained areas of retail that still required the
customer to have assistance from the retail clerk; for example, placing an order at
any service department in a grocery store, placing an order at a restaurant, paying
for your purchases, finding a product in the store, etc. In reaction to this, retailers
started expanding the self-service concept by using touch-screen kiosks that enabled
customers to effectively perform these tasks on their own.
That brief history shows that self-service has actually existed in retail for a very long
time, and that it has been one of the primary enablers in the industry’s growth. It
also shows that customers in fact prefer self-service, but why? The answer is of
course that self-service helps the consumer by making shopping more convenient
and, really, more productive. Self-service enables the retailer to give the customer
more options and, perhaps most importantly it gives the customer more control.
Control of their shopping experience is what customers really want. This way they
can decide how to use that control to increase their convenience factor when and
where they want or need to.
When a customer walks into a favorite fast-food restaurant for lunch and sees that
there is a long line, the customer realizes that there are two options: stay and wait,
or go to another fast-food restaurant. The first option may not actually be an option
if the customer does not have the time to wait. This is at the point where a properly
deployed self-service solution gives the customer the control they want and keeps
them coming back to that restaurant. If the restaurant had a bank of self-ordering
kiosks available, the customer effectively has a third option; place an order at the
kiosk and wait in a hopefully much shorter line, or no line at all, to pick up the food.
Furthermore, perceptive customers will eventually realize that the self-ordering
kiosks create the additional positive effect of shortening up the line for traditional
orders.
The bottom line is that control, in the form of having more options, is perhaps the
major reason why customers initially, and continually, use self-service. But there,
there are lesser, though important, factors that make self-service attractive to
customers. Retailers should consider these items as well:
- Customers want to know that the self-service process has operational
integrity; that sounds complicated, but it boils down to the fact that retailers
should implement a separate prep function for self-service orders, so that
customers do not become preoccupied with one order type receiving
preferential treatment over another
- Customers want the kiosk to work when they go to use it. As self-ordering
kiosks proliferate, this becomes a more important issue; retailers need to
establish a process for monitoring, maintaining, servicing and supporting the
kiosk hardware; the availability of the kiosk equipment will ultimately become
as important as the availability of the POS system
- Customers want a self-service application that is fast, accurate, easy to use,
and facilitates the order process; it’s important that the content and pricing
on the kiosk are accurate; that the kiosk keeps the customer’s order history;
it’s also important that the customer be presented with opportunities to add
to or upgrade the order
- Customers want a quick and safe way to pay for their order, so it’s imperative
that credit/debit, or cash (if a cash acceptor is available on the kiosk)
payments are processed quickly and securely
Giving the customer more options, or more control, through self-ordering kiosks, and
making the self-ordering process easy to use, efficient and properly integrated into
the existing traditional order process, will no doubt help retail grow a few trillion
dollars more. |
