Kiosk Guide

Revel Systems Kiosk Guide

This quick kiosk guide will explore a few simple steps to enable and improve self-service at your establishment, helping to streamline operations, simplify order flow and increase profits. Read on for more!

1. Set Objectives and Goals

It is important to first outline your goals. As they say, “What gets measured, gets done.” Your goals must be specific and measurable, whether you choose to measure numbers, percentages or dollars. When setting goals, the most powerful goals follow the SMART goal setting method. Your goals should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time Bound

Why are you adding a kiosk to your establishment? Common reasons include:

• Ease busy hours like lunch rushes or commute hours
• Open a grab-and-go section within your establishment
• Allow customers to self-check-out
• Reduce volume of orders to your staff, freeing them for other tasks

Each of these reasons is accompanied by different sets of goals and measurement metrics:

• If your reason for adding a self-service kiosk is to reduce wait time during busy hours, you can set goals such as reducing customer wait time by 20% or processing X number of customers an hour.
• Or if your goal is to introduce a new grab and go section, set goals such as adding X dollars of revenue each month.

Outline a set of SMART goals and then move on to step two to begin mapping out how you will achieve your goals.

2. Identify Customers

After you set your goals, you’ll want to think about the customers who will help you achieve those goals. Again, depending on your goals, your target customers may change.

New Businesses:

If you are just opening up a restaurant, you can start by focusing on consumer groups that would benefit from using a self-service kiosks as well as consumers who are comfortable with technology.

• Millennials – when you grow up immersed in technology, you are comfortable, and expect technology. This is a key group to consider.
• Gen X – while this group didn’t grow up with the same technology immersion as Millennials, folks in this group are comfortable using technology and have been for quite some time. This group is now in the workforce and many have disposable income.

Existing Businesses:

Leverage your existing customer base as a starting point. If you’re using customer relationship management (CRM) or loyalty programs, utilize these lists to target both frequent customers, as well as those who may have stopped coming in.

3. Setting Up Your Kiosk for Success

Location, Location, Location

Depending on your goal, the ideal location for your self-service kiosk changes, but one thing remains constant, foot traffic is key. Make sure your kiosk is placed in a high traffic area in your establishment. A prominently displayed kiosk encourages customers to utilize it.

• If your goal is to create a grab-and-go section, establish a dedicated area within your establishment and place your kiosk in an accessible location that enables customers to quickly grab items and check themselves out.
• Adding a kiosk to ease congestion and lines? Put a self-service kiosk where your line forms and give your customers the choice to place an order on the kiosk rather than get in line.
• If you are enabling your customers to check themselves out, as many grocery stores are now doing, create a self-checkout lane near your standard checkout lanes to let your customers ring up their purchases.

Pro Tip: Place your kiosk in a location that is visible from the street, encouraging street traffic to come into your establishment, check out the menu, and place orders.

4. Educate Your Team

Educate your staff. Whenever introducing a new tool, it is important for your team to be well versed in its features and functionality. Train your customer facing staff on the self-service process that your customers will experience.

Keep an employee on kiosk watch. Wait, aren’t these supposed to be self-service? Especially when you first introduce kiosks into your establishment, have one of your employees keep an eye on the kiosk area, and available to assist if a customer gets stuck at any point.

5. Marketing and Promotion

After your kiosk is set up and your team educated, it’s time to use marketing to ramp up awareness and excitement. You want your customers and future customers to be as excited about the new addition to your establishment as you are!

Use email marketing to spread the word. Send your customers an email sharing the big news. This is a perfect opportunity to engage with your customers, both frequent visitors and those who haven’t stopped by in a while.

Offer exclusive promotions. Encourage your customers to try out your kiosk by offering promotions or discounts that are only applicable when customers use a kiosk. By providing a monetary incentive, your customers will be more inclined to try out the kiosk – and become a repeat user.

Add signage. Placing a machine in your restaurant alone won’t bring in new orders. It’s important to add signage to the self-service station for clarity and guidance. A simple ‘Order Here’ sign leads your customers to utilize the kiosk to place orders. Similarly, for take-out or grab and go orders, signage helps to make the kiosk’s purpose clear. Try out a fun sign to ease any hesitation, clear confusion, and help to improve overall service.

Optimize the upsell. Self-service kiosks are a surefire method to increase ticket amount through add-ons. Make sure your menu includes imagery and robust add-on options to provide customers complete control and customization empowering them to order the perfect meal.

Utilize loyalty on the kiosk. Revel’s kiosk integrates directly with your POS platform, and if you utilize a loyalty program, your customers can earn rewards every time they use your kiosk.

6. Track and Evaluate

Track and measure the performance of your self-service kiosk. It’s important to have a clear understanding of your kiosk’s performance from day one.

Sales Reporting

Utilize Revel reporting tools to measure sales and volume that takes place on your kiosk. Use your reporting data to measure the goals you established. Monthly evaluation is important to keep you on track to achieving your goals.

Track and Measure Goals

Remember those goals you set in step one? Well, keep those handy and top of mind. One way to do this is to keep track with a chart or log to clearly measure your performance against your goals. Revisit your chart each month to measure!

Example:

Goal

If you didn’t meet your expectations one month, take some time to evaluate your marketing and promotional strategy. Are there any changes or additions you could make? Think about small changes like adding signage or sending out an additional email to your loyalty program.

Final Thoughts

Have fun with the new technology in your establishment and encourage your customers to do the same! As with all change, it can take some getting used to, but once your customers get the hang of it, your new self-service kiosk can be a great asset to your business.