A. Self-service technology is an emergent Technology

The current global interest to migrate services and processes to Self-Service is an outcome of extensive evidence that self-service automation increases customer convenience. Multiple studies have shown that self-service improves service delivery, increases service through-put and relieves employees from many mundane tasks that don’t contribute to the bottomline.

This renewed interest in non-ATM Self-Service would not have evolved if the large deployed base of ATMs (more than 300,000 in US alone) had been easy to extend and augment with newer services and capabilities. The natural progression of a flexible technology would have been that the Automated X Machine would have been the central core, the Teller version (ATM) that we see today would have been one type of self-service delivery and there would have been numerous collateral products.

This could not happen because ATMs are prohibitively expensive and a relatively inflexible platform for delivering multiple financial services. Further compounding this problem is the total cost of operating (TCO) an ATM machine. Legacy and proprietary ATMs are difficult to upgrade. In contrast self-service automation via kiosks has become very attractive because of low cost and simpler integration with fewer proprietary lock-ins.

Self-service kiosks have been around for 25 years but did not gain much of a foothold initially because they too were klunky, difficult to use and almost impossible to maintain and secure remotely. For these reasons, few bothered to deploy kiosks as a means to enhance customer satisfaction, as a service delivery conduit, and as a revenue generation source. In the last decade the complexity of transactions and consumer acceptance has increased but quite dramatically.

This decade has ushered in a tech savvy consumer who demands better alternatives than the traditional line-up at stores. Airline Kiosks have become the jump-point for a number of impressive solutions. The complexity of transactions that can be offered on Kiosks is high—from self-checkout to check cashing, from guided selling to web purchases, even ability to dispense cash. As a result ATMs are becoming a sub-set of the self-service kiosk concept.

The shift in focus from hardware to software capability is because the software solution that runs kiosks can be a key differentiator in building competitive advantage for a company. But, so far, much of the ROI research around customer experience on kiosks has focused on attractiveness and looks factors of the kiosk rather than the service capability. This is rapidly changing.

Today there are many Kiosk integrators and even ATM manufacturers who are simplifying their HW platforms to an extent that the price points are becoming very attractive.

B. Services generate revenue. Think Services.

The type and variety of services that are offered on a kiosk are revenue generators. If you can add services easily, it makes it easier to meet future demand. Software choice for a kiosk can either be the decision to build a highway today vs. simply expanding a one-lane road. Software investment can make all the difference in future profitability and customer relationship building. While evaluating options, cost may be similar between two options, but long-term profitability will be completely different for a software solution that is flexible and extensible.

C. Build Solution vs. Buy Product(s)

By expectation a product is available off-the-shelf and is repeatable (i.e., “cookie cutter”. ) It is available ‘As Is’ and is the same for everybody. A product also has limited options for customization and branding. On the other hand, a solution is configurable and it addresses a unique problem. By definition it cannot be repeated. It is therefore, almost naïve to pursue a self-service automation approach using products rather than a solution. Unlike a product, a solution is built on the assumption that problems are unique because each business is unique.