The US self-service kiosk market is booming, but kiosks have had a mixed reception in the UK. Joanna Perry assesses the benefits and how we can learn from successes across the pond

The resounding conclusion from this month’s KioskCom Europe conference held in London is that the Americans are way ahead of the Brits when it comes to deploying self-service kiosks in their stores. Yet a recent encounter at New York’s Rockefeller Center with a member of staff who appeared to be paid just to press the elevator call button highlighted how cheap labour must be over the pond.

It’s something of a paradox, because relatively higher European wage bills should be driving quicker adoption of kiosks here, in the same way as is being seen with other technologies such as self-service checkouts. So why isn’t this the case, and what are US retailers doing that those in the UK are not?

Although kiosk pilots still occur in the UK, there have only been a few high-profile deployments by retailers such as Boots and Argos – other big retailers are not joining their ranks.

US company Summit Research is a kiosk deployment consultancy. President Francie Mendelsohn says that the secrets to success when operating kiosks hasn’t changed over the years, but US retailers appear to be better at adhering to them. As an easy way to describe the golden rules, Summit has developed the acronym FIRE, which stands for fast, interesting, relevant and easy-to-use.

Mendelsohn says: “Europe used to be ahead, but the scope of projects there now is not what we are seeing in the States.” Summit estimates that there are more than 1 million kiosks in use worldwide today, 49 per cent of which are in retail environments if you include digital photo kiosks and 34 per cent if you don’t.

Some 613,000 kiosks are in operation in North America, compared with only 148,000 in Europe. What’s more, the adoption rate in the US is pulling ahead, with the projected growth rate for the market between last year and 2009 at 97 per cent for North America, against 50 per cent for Europe.

A problem solved
If the UK can learn anything from the success of kiosks in the US, it is that, to be successful, kiosks need to offer real solutions to problems that both customers and staff face in stores.

One example of a kiosk that creates value for both consumer and retailer, despite not being transactional, is the Healthnotes format. Installed in US grocery, health and drug stores, it provides information on issues such as medical conditions, drugs and vitamins. The benefit to the retailer is that it can log on to a secure area of Healthnotes’ web site to view reports on what their customers are interested in. This is provided on a store-by-store basis, so it can tailor its ranges and in-store marketing appropriately.

Another kiosk deployment that has proved successful is at Ahold-owned supermarket chain Giant Food. Mendelsohn says that its kiosks have become very popular.

St Clair Interactive International chief executive Doug Peter has been heavily involved with the development of kiosks for Giant Food. The 260-store chain had operated kiosks for different applications such as deli, recipe ideas and employment for more than a decade. However, each kind was operated completely separately.

Giant decided that it wanted a store-wide system to incorporate many customer services, with one user interface that was also integrated with the retailer’s EPoS and loyalty systems. It now has 600 multi-application kiosks operating at 60 of its stores. They all run 25 different applications, three of which have been developed in-house by the retailer. Since the kiosks launched, they have been used 50 million times and have generated 500,000 customer orders.

The kiosks provide a range of services, such as allowing shoppers to order products from the deli counter as soon as they enter the store and go to collect them at their leisure. Specialist birthday and other celebration cakes can also be ordered through the kiosks, which give a choice of between 50 and 500 products, depending on how far in advance the customer places their order.

Another US success story is the DVD rental kiosk RedBox. More than 6,000 units will be up and running there by the end of this year in retailers including Supervalu and Albertsons. The kiosks operate as part of a multichannel strategy, where DVDs can be reserved online, so the customer knows that their trip to the kiosk won’t be a wasted one. DVDs can also be returned to any other RedBox to maximise convenience.

Vending kiosks are also becoming more popular in the US for higher value items such as iPods and have even been used in retail environments by brands such as Elizabeth Arden.

However, there have been failures in there too. Mendelsohn explains that Home Depot, which sells 15,000 different plumbing fixtures, created an in-house kiosk application so that customers could browse these fixtures more easily. Although the application was well designed, the execution of the kiosks was not. She says: “It wasn’t successful, because no one knew it was there and Home Depot didn’t get buy-in from staff. After a pilot of 15, they were scrapped.”

Keep it simple
Drilling down into the specifics of the FIRE rules, Mendelsohn says that kiosk user interfaces should use as few words as possible without requiring consumers to guess how to use the device. Scrolling and click-throughs should also be minimised. Content should be correct, but must also mirror the simplicity of the user interface.

She adds that although attention to detail is important, content should not be high-brow. “Try to design it for the lowest common denominator, which in the US is fourth grade, or about a reading age of nine,” she says.

There is even best practice for the colour of the user interface. Mendelsohn advises: “Try to avoid dark backgrounds, because they show fingerprints and people don’t like to touch things they think are dirty.”

Furthermore, web site and kiosk interface design should be complementary, but not identical. She explains: “The biggest mistake you can make is to take a web site and put it on a kiosk. In most cases you have to make modifications, because consumers are using it in a different way and in a different place – they tend to be in public and standing up.”

Despite this, the growth of broadband and the resulting improvements in response times that shoppers have experienced on retailers’ web sites has led users to expect more from kiosks. An interval of five seconds between touching a screen and it loading the next page used to be acceptable; now it should take no longer than three seconds or the user will think the kiosk isn’t working properly.

And, when testing kiosks for robustness, all manner of factors must be taken into account. For instance, Mendelsohn explains that older people tend to use their thumbs to touch the screen and touch the screen very firmly, as though they are trying to press a button. She says that they have even been known to crack screens with the pressure they apply.

On top of this, she says that those deploying kiosks in the UK must consider privacy concerns. “People in the UK really don’t like to enter personal information,” she says, giving one example of a kiosk that fell down on this. A kiosk produced by Sony to help customers choose an appropriate audio system for their car in stores also asked for names and phone numbers as part of a survey. People tended to give joke names.

Summit Research has surveyed US retailers on why they are choosing to deploy kiosks, although Mendelsohn warns that the results are a little misleading, because retailers under-report how significant the opportunity to reduce staff costs is.

The principal reason given was to provide product information, cited by a third of retailers questioned. 28 per cent mentioned queue-busting, 27 per cent said to improve customer service and 23 per cent said to reduce costs. Only 21 per cent admitted it was to reduce staff requirements. “They are not really being honest. In reality, it is the number one reason for many companies,” says Mendelsohn.

Whatever the benefit that retailers think they can get from kiosks, the true test of the technology still lies in what the customer thinks. She concludes: “Your users are the judge of whether you are delivering value.”

Hopefully UK retailers can harness some of the progress made by their US counterparts to ensure their kiosk pilots deliver value to customers too.