Facial recognition technology has huge potential in the world of self-service. It is already widely used in kiosks for identification, security and personnel access, including in high-profile applications like border control. In sectors such as retail, food service, hospitality and more, facial recognition systems are being explored as options to administer account-based transactions - everything [...]
One of the classic errors businesses make with new technology is putting all their focus on the onboarding phase and expecting results to automatically follow. The underlying assumption here is that the simple act of adopting tech is sufficient to transform and improve operations. But it’s not technology per se that brings results. It’s how [...]
Kiosks are best known for providing self-service ordering and checkout options in retail and hospitality. But there’s an argument to say that the most common (or at least the most broadly applicable) use for kiosks is as information points. From airports to libraries, office complexes to hospitals, transport hubs to museums and other leisure attractions, [...]
It was Alan Turing, code-breaking war hero, computer science pioneer and all-around mathematical genius, who gave one of the earliest versions of the much-recycled “the machines are taking over” quote. It was during a pretty obscure lecture given in 1951 that Turing suggested that humanity would “at some stage… have to expect the machines to [...]
In our last blog, we tackled the issue of the high shrink rates being reported at supermarket self-checkout points, as customers supposedly take advantage of ‘weak’ security. Our perspective is that the weakness isn’t something inherent in the technology, but rather in the way it is being deployed, without the kind of checks appropriate to [...]
Nearly every business these days could be described as a hybrid operation. That’s hybrid in the sense of a mix of human and machine. The advance of digital technology means that the days when every process and interaction was handled manually by people are a long way behind us. But at the same time, a [...]
Every industry has to take the rough with the smooth, and no technology is perfect. Recently, kiosks have been attracting the kind of attention no one wants from the media, who excel in picking up on a negative and whipping it up into something mildly sensational. The issue in this case? Self-service checkouts facilitate shoplifting. [...]
Ask people where they use self-service kiosks, the most common answer you will get is likely to be supermarket checkouts or fast food restaurants. Make a list of the top 10 answers, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they were all examples of indoor settings. But that doesn’t mean kiosks are for indoors only. In [...]
Self-service kiosks are having a transformational impact across customer-facing industries. Much of the buzz is focused on retail and the quick-service restaurant (QSR) sector. But that hardly scratches the surface of where kiosks are being used to reimagine the customer experience. Hotels, airports, cinemas, leisure attractions - you can also add more service-oriented sectors like [...]
Customer feedback has become a familiar feature of the digital world. Buy something online, visit a website, download an app, you’ll often be asked to leave a review or share whether you were satisfied with the experience (or otherwise). There’s good reason for this. According to Zendesk, online customer reviews influence 88% of consumer buying [...]
