July 2005 – Any sensible business thrives on customer feedback. That is why Icon Interactive provided Kiosk magazine with tips for automating the survey process, from Icon Interactive.™
The article published by Kiosk Magazine and Kiosk Marketplace helps organizations save money and increase collecting customer data by using kiosks.
Troy Janisch (TJ), president and founder of Icon Interactive, offered Kiosk Magazine (KM) the following tips for implementing successful survey kiosks:
KM: Who is the ideal user of a survey kiosk?
TJ:Survey kiosks serve the extremes well -- regular customers and transactional one.
Customers that have brand loyalty are ideal users for survey kiosks. They can provide the baseline you need to measure a company's quality of service. Regular customers are always going to notice changes in quality first. Since "regulars" may have personal relationships with some employees, they sometimes view talking to the manager as "going over someone's head" and may let things slide. A kiosk gives them an opportunity to provide immediate feedback (both good and bad).
Another ideal user is a transactional customer. This is a customer who used your service one-time and has nothing to lose by providing quick and honest feedback. Transactional customers often need an incentive to participate, but their input is valuable. Transactional customers are great at identifying the expectations of prospective customers -- which is something regular customers may not be able to do as well.
KM:What business(es) are particularly suited to benefit from them?
TJ:Three words: Service, Event, Attractions. Customer satisfaction kiosks are best suited for businesses that are offering an EXPERIENCE. For service companies, the brand perception and perceived quality of service often hinges on a few key, low-paid employees that have direct interaction with customers. A customer survey kiosk provides the ability for customers to provide immediate feedback. The kiosks also provide a physical reminder to employees that the level of service they provide in each transaction is important.
Events and Attractions benefit from customer satisfaction kiosks because when someone attends a bad event or attraction, they aren't likely to provide unsolicited feedback. Instead, they're likely to use word-of-mouth to let friends and colleagues know about good and bad experiences. Businesses that offer attractions content that they only hear from customers when they are dissatisfied (aka seeking a refund). An on-site kiosk can gather positive experiences and testimonials. Since events and attractions typically have periods of waiting associated with them, they are an ideal situation for providing immediate feedback.
KM:Talk about the migration from a company's existing paper-based surveys to a kiosk - what is the process like?
TJ:Migrating to customer survey kiosks is easy for two reasons: 1) if a survey already exists, it can be converted for kiosk use quickly. 2) If a company is gathering customer survey data manually, a kiosk will always have a good return on investment (ROI). Web-enables survey kiosks allow businesses to monitor customer satisfaction in real time. They don't need to bother with postage-paid surveys or having someone enter data. They get quick results, bar charts, and the ability to drill-down into the results to answer serious questions related to their company's performance.
The exciting part for many businesses is the ability to add skip patterns and follow-up questions. You can ask different followup questions when someone who enjoyed their experience than when they have a bad experience. A customer survey kiosk performs excellent triage.
KM:Talk about your offerings - are survey results returned to a remote database in real time, or batched at regular intervals?
TJ:Our kiosks offer more than a survey -- they offer a turn-key surveying platform. The questions aren't hard coded. And, its possible for customers to maintain their surveys and compile results without getting us involved on a regular basis. Questions can be added, modified, or deleted by a business without requiring help from us.
We offer two kiosk scenarios: web-enabled and freestanding. If the kiosk is Web-enabled, the data and questions are typically managed from a centralized server. It can be our server or the clients server. If its not web-enabled, the data is typically mined on a regular basis. Increasingly, this involves little work on-location. For example, many stand alone kiosks store data on USB pen drives that can be swapped onsite and dropped into a prepaid envelope.
Our expertise in creating kiosks for Winterbike, the San Francisco Marathon, and other events has resulted in kiosks that are easy to configure and quick to setup. All of the pieces ship inexpensively and the enclosure is easy to adapt from location to location.
About Icon Interactive
Icon Interactive™ is an industry leader helping companies imagine, implement and reinvent their online strategy. Having worked with clients of all sizes, from New York, NY, to San Francisco, CA, to Milwaukee, WI, Icon Interactive™ offers an eclectic and effective approach to online strategy, marketing, and technology.
