Interactive kiosks have rolled out across all sectors in our everyday lives; they speed up our queuing times, provide information, allow us to carry out purchases and deliver customer service, among other uses.
New York City is currently leading the way in utilising the benefits interactive kiosks offer in new and innovative ways with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s On The Go campaign, which has been distributed on 100 kiosks located throughout the NYC subway system.
The On The Go kiosks allow subway riders to browse through carefully themed gift guides containing thousands of curated products which are selected using real time data on what is popular at any given moment. Consumers can choose items and then push the information through to their phone or email, where they can carry out the transaction in one seamless experience.
This is an proactive campaign which offers a solution to a problem most consumers don’t even know they have. Given that more than 40% of Christmas shoppers are planning to use their mobile phones to pay for their shopping, it is an excellent example of how kiosk technology can be used to capitalise on consumer behaviour.
The ingenuity behind On The Go is that it helps to provide a seamless shopping experience over omnichannel ventures for consumers and make the purchase process more efficient. The kiosks themselves do not take payment, so simply act as a tool for simplifying shopping which would already be carried out by subway riders throughout their day.
It is simple, but leading-edge ideas like this which build positive brand-customer interactions that can lead to brand loyalty. Loyal customers cost less to retain, spend more and recruit new customers through word of mouth marketing, making them the ultimate goal for many businesses. As more brands compete to get ahead, we can expect to see more innovative uses of kiosk technology throughout 2016.