Touch-screen kiosks have truly found their place in the commercial world, bringing mass revenue and improved customer service to the retail, travel, and public sectors. A favourite of major chains and large international brands, kiosks are slowly being embraced by the independent business sector, gaining a presence in small shops and family businesses.

But that doesn’t mean that every kiosk installation will go as planned. Without the right combination of tactics and retail strategy, your kiosk installation could easily fail. These two tactics have helped other retailers successfully implement kiosks into their sales process, and now they can help you do the same.

1. Pick the right location

Location is everything. Place your kiosk in a dark, hidden corner and it will rarely be used. Place it in a high-traffic area and you’ll find it becoming an inconvenience, distracting shoppers and causing queues. The key to a successful kiosk deployment is placement; choose an area in which customers can search for information without standing in the way of others.

2. Offer the right information

Kiosks shouldn’t be your entire customer service strategy, nor should they make up the bulk of your store’s interaction with customers. Provide enough information to build interest in your products and services, but ensure that human interaction remains part of the sales process.

So you’ve got your kiosk and now it’s all up to you. How can you truly maximise the investment you’ve put in? Kiosk deployment can be quite a complicated affair, and a successful rollout is never a guarantee.

To help you minimise deployment difficulties, here are five key issues that normally hamper a kiosk’s potential so be aware:

- A failure to present a truly compelling offer to the customer

- Relying on intangibles for an attractive return on investment

- A failure to differentiate between the pilot stage and the scaling stage

- Forgetting that the first roll-out will never be perfect

- A failure to effectively locate kiosks

For advice on kiosks and their deployment, contact Protouch; market leaders in self-service technology.