Kiosk Solutions Apr-May 2017 | Page 23

customer survey kiosks Take a survey and win… Get more and improved consumer survey results using self-service kiosks By Olea Kiosks Inc – www.olea.com Whether by online pop-up form, a receipt with a URL, or a strategically placed kiosk with a few questions on its mind, U.S. consumers are increasingly asked for their feedback when they conduct certain transactions. Buy a taco? Please take a survey for a chance to win. Order a new bedspread online? Follow this link and tell us how it went. Nowadays, appeals for a review from your hotel are more common than mints on pillows. Even trips to the doctor, DMV and providers of other day- to-day services are chased by pleas that customers give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down. As the former New York Mayor was fond of asking his citizens, “How am I doin’?” Sure, it’s a good thing, this search by leaders for understanding of how their enterprise is performing in the minds of the people who matter most. Well conceived and executed consumer surveys can help executives not only identify and address immediate issues – a customer found something icky in a sandwich – but sniff out long-term trends or bigger picture issues that may otherwise spell doom for the organisation. Inquiring minds A number of factors can influence the success of a project to collect and evaluate consumer opinions of recent transactions. Some include the number of questions, whether there are incentives to take the survey, and whether questions are leading respondents to one type of answer or another. Just as important, however, is the means of conducting the survey itself. As mentioned, phone calls, mail and face- to-face can be prohibitively expensive. Comment cards are hard to track and can be tampered with by people with vested interests. And even modern tools have drawbacks. Consider the most popular online option today, the receipt- website-code combination: • Will the employee delivering the receipt remember to point out the survey instructions? • Will the employee selectively choose whom to encourage? Happy, congenial customers may be directed more consistently than curmudgeonly ones, for example. • What’s the likelihood that the customer will remember to take the survey? That the receipt will still be in his possession when he’s in front of his device? That he’ll remember the experience accurately? Those are just some of the reasons Vincent Brown, a self-service expert with DynaTouch, prefers kiosks for this application. “In our experience, the advantage of a survey kiosk versus a web-based or online platform is convenience,” Brown said. “You’re presenting the customer with a platform to give feedback right there at the point of service. Brown said that in his experience, after he leaves a business, he’s on to the rest of the day with little likelihood he’ll want to revisit that experience while sitting in front of his computer or using his tablet. But do customers want to take the time when leaving a business to interact with a kiosk? Brown understands the scepticism but points to one of his clients to support the notion that yes, kiosks will collect more survey responses than by other means. A particular U.S. Government department had been using web-based KIOSK solutions 23