Kiosks and good self-service technology are relatively new, we continue to learn what works and what doesn’t. Even though
looks matter, a well-designed application with good workflow
that runs reliably is more important than a “pretty Kiosk.” Past self-service deployments in financial services were an
expensive learning experience because a financial kiosk is far
more complex than a typical ATM or a typical HR kiosk that is
enabling browsing in an office, retail location or branch lobby.

The pioneers in these deployments failed to break out from the “ATM” footprint and ended up deploying systems that cost as high as $40,000 to $75,000 (each) for conducting basic financial transactions like ATM, Check Cashing, Money Transfer, etc. And this was just the additional cost of adding peripherals like Check Readers, special printers, Bill Acceptors and Phones on/around Vanilla ATM’s.

Then came the service costs of supporting these machines in
the field with First and Second Line Maintenance. Deployers
can pay upwards of $250 per month per machine. This is just
the recurring cost to maintain the HW system in the field. The
bulk of these costs can be attributed to SW that was not
inherently designed for self-service automation and is
incapable of self-diagnosis and recovery.

Service issues are indeed important since initial kiosk
deployment can succeed or fail on service issues alone, forget
software bugs, hardware kinks or connectivity. But once the early dust settles, the factors that can help extract maximum mileage from the kiosk is the application that runs and monitors them.

Rule 2
Form follows function. The fact that it will run smoothly is more important than the appearance of the hardware.