Preparing Businesses for the Self Service Revolution, an Intel White Paper

Consumers are demanding more self-service options. They enjoy the convenience, ease-of-use, privacy and speed enabled by new self-service technologies, which are springing up in a large number of industries. In addition, consumers are increasingly comfortable using a variety of channels to interact with business, such as the Internet, mobile devices, automated teller machines (ATMs), self-checkout and kiosks. In a recent edition, TIME magazine’s top-10 list identified self-service as the second “big idea” that’s revolutionary and changing the world.

The article highlights how businesses everywhere are relying more and more on self-service to provide better customer service. This adoption is accelerating and extends across many industries as people use self-service kiosks in airports, hotels, train stations, banking centers and grocery stores. In fact, kiosks are virtually everywhere.

In order to thrive and survive in this ever-changing marketplace, businesses need to recognize how swiftly consumers are embracing self-service technologies and respond with industry-specific solutions. Businesses can use kiosks, which offer a relatively simple, yet effective, approach to provide information and transaction processing to customers. Kiosks can lower service costs and enhance brand perception, and perhaps most important, improve the customer experience. Self-service is really about offering more service.

This white paper reviews some of the results of NCR’s 2008 Self-Service Consumer Survey for North America and shows how these findings can be used by businesses to incorporate successful kiosks. This paper also describes what to look for in a kiosk platform to meet your future needs and get the biggest benefit from your investment. As an example, the advanced NCR SelfServ* 60 kiosk solution, implementing Intel® technology, is designed to create different types of kiosks for nearly any industry segment.