Retailers considering kiosks installations used to ask vendors mostly about using them as shelf extenders or for self-service customer orders – but no more, Doug Peter, president of Toronto-based kiosk systems and service provider St. Clair Interactive, tells InternetReailer.com. “I am amazed at the degree of interest shown by retailers over the past few moths in using kiosks not only for wringing cost out of the front end of the operation, but for human resources and benefits services,” he says. “We used to position that as an add-on. But now, it’s the second question prospects ask. Retailers are telling us that they want to take cost not just out of their customer service desk, but also out of employee services. They’ve obviously woken up to the fact that there’s a lot of money there.”
Peter estimates that inquiries from clients and prospective clients about the use of kiosks for employee-facing applications has tripled or quadrupled over the past few months. Store operators are tapping into interactive kiosks to allow employees to do everything from benefits selection to time-off requests to register interest in other jobs at the company online.
Peter says St. Clair always has promoted multiple applications on kiosk installations. “A single application such as film drop-off or deli-ordering is unlikely to pay back the infrastructure cost,” he says. “But a combination of these applications at various points of the store, all running on the same platform, makes a good case for ROI. And if you add the employee-facing applications to the platform, the cost is marginal. So that’s moved way up in priority, as part of the cost focus among U.S. retailers now.”
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