Sales Kiosk 101: Best Practices for Implementing a Kiosk POS Solution
You’re thinking about implementing a sales kiosk in your restaurant, but you want to do it in such a way that considers both your staff and your customers. It’s all well and good to have happy staff and happy customers, but the point-of-sale kiosk needs to have a positive impact on your bottom line. In this article, we will take a look at some of the kiosk best practices you should consider so that you can implement a Kiosk POS solution to benefit your employees and enhance your customer’s experience.
Increase Time Saving Convenience
The old adage “Time is money” is not quite true. Time is far more valuable than money. But saving time on repetitive business functions will indeed save your business money. Not only is your time valuable, but your customers also value their time. In a recent survey, 66% of consumers said they prefer self-service over interacting with an employee because it is faster and less stressful. So how can both staff and customers benefit from this?
Staffing Assignments
With the right kiosk POS system, one staff member can tend to multiple kiosks, allowing them to assist more customers quickly. This will allow you to reposition staff to assist with other tasks around the restaurant, like order preparation or cleaning tables. Valuable seconds can be shaved off order turnaround time by reassigning staff to more productive tasks.
Customer Experience
A key sales kiosk best practice is proper placement within your restaurant. Depending on your restaurant type, placing self-ordering kiosks on the tables could work best. For fast-food restaurants, a standing point of sale kiosk on the floor or front countertop may work best.
One of the values of these kiosks is that customers can review their order before they send it to the kitchen. This greatly reduces errors and makes sure there is no question about menu items or special preparation instructions.
You should offer the ability to pay and print a receipt right at the table, so guests don’t have to wait to check out and move on with their day.
Offer Customization to Boost Order Size
While customer satisfaction and employees having challenging, fulfilling work is important, none of it will continue if your business does not make a profit. Profit is what makes all the fun stuff possible. To that end, self-serve kiosks have been shown to increase ticket size by nearly 30%.
Displaying rotating ads and featured specials is a proven kiosk best practice that will help you achieve even greater increases in your restaurant.
No More Staff Upselling
With point-of-sale kiosks, restaurants remove the need for staff to have to upsell items. Even the best servers can forget specials. New employees may be nervous and flub the pitch. The kiosk takes those variables out of the equation with advertisements of your best sellers, drink specials, and loyalty announcements.
Your staff can then focus on creating connections with customers without the pressure of feeling like they have to be a salesperson.
Customer Convenience
Meanwhile, your customers can take their time with a kiosk POS without feeling rushed by a busy server. They can explore the full menu if they want to. Or they can order right away without waiting for anyone to wait on them.
When customers aren’t feeling rushed, they will find exactly what they want and will be more likely to spend more on their meal by trying different items they had never noticed before.
Integrated Payment
Quick and easy payments make for a better all-around experience for customers and staff. Implementing a kiosk point of sale system will increase your table turn organically by eliminating the extra steps of having a server process payment.
Removing Staff Inconveniences
This sales kiosk best practice calls for instructing your staff not to rush your customers. They won’t need to rush them. Your staff will also appreciate the elimination of having to split tickets. All of that will be done by the customer at the point-of-sale kiosk. You can also eliminate the cost of paper and your staff’s time of printing out multiple receipts and bills.
Reduce Customer Worry
Increasingly consumers are eschewing the security and anonymity of cash for the convenience of credit cards. Last year, a NerdWallet study found that 80% of customers prefer to pay with a card. Having a kiosk POS systems offers your customers numerous advantages:
- Customers no longer need to worry about their credit card leaving their sight and their information stolen at a remote server station.
- Customers can pay at their convenience, when they are ready without having to flag down a server, request the bill, wait for the bill, give their card to the server, and wait for their server to return.
- Customers can choose to receive a printed receipt or via email.
- Customers are far more likely to sign up for loyalty rewards when checking out, increasing the chances that they will return to your restaurant.
The task restaurant operators agree to is meeting the needs and many of the wants of our customers. This is best done when your staff is happy with their role and serving experience as well.
By implementing these kiosk best practices, you can employ tabletop, floor mount, or counter kiosks to help build a better experience for both staff and customers. Point-of-sale kiosks help you and your customers save time, boost order sizes, and organically increase table turn; you just need to make sure they are implemented in the right manner.
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