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
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