Video kiosk often integrates video conferencing and help users to do a quick video call with available operators.

Check-in kiosks are extensively used in hotels and hospitality industry where in customer can check-in to their respective suites, rooms on their own by completing the customer on-boarding and registration over the self service kiosk. This acts as a new service channel for the brands. These check-in kiosks are modern, sleek and easily allow guests to locate their reservation, put a credit card on file and obtain a room key that is encoded and dispensed right from the kiosk.

Airport check-in kiosks are very sophisticated kiosks equipped with numerous peripherals such as card readers, barcode scanners, passport readers etc. They are built to be very robust due to the high level of traffic that this self-service kiosk needs to cater to at the airport.

Wayfinding kiosk are extensively used in shopping malls, airports or in bigger setups like institutes etc. Wayfinding kiosk acts as digital building directory that help users to navigate their destination and encourage them to explore their surrounding area with interactive information. Wayfinding kiosk provide a revenue generating advertising platform by offering valuable digital advertising space.

Visitor management kiosk provides end-to-end automation of the visitor registration process including sign-in, on boarding and sign-out of the visitors. It’s an easy, secure and modern visitor management kiosk solution.

HR kiosks provides cost-effective solution for hiring new staff, provides with benefits administration and eases employee communications with self-service kiosk technology. HR kiosk offer employees option to view-pay slips, leave records and overtime dues.

A new way to order in QSRs is via self-ordering kiosks, the kiosk provides convenience to the end customers by giving them an option of self-ordering and checkout that to without getting in the queue. These interactive kiosks have become very much popular in big QSR chains like McDonalds, Burger King, KFC where in customers walks to the kiosk which already has the digital menu and other a-la-carte offers displayed and customer just needs to order through it. There by saving a great amount of time and adding extra convenience. Reportedly the number of installations for self-service kiosk is on an upward trajectory, big brands in QSR are installing kiosks extensively and they are investing rapidly on the use and deployment of these technology.

Ticketing kiosks are extensively used in transportation, amusement parks and in movie theatres. Ticketing kiosk provides end customer with convenience of printing their tickets. Ticketing kiosk are sleek and interactive kiosk which fits in easily in any of the setup whether they are placed outside in the open or within the premises, they help in enhancing customer experience.

Interactive kiosks have already created a lot of stir in the banking and insurance sector. Banking kiosk has the ability for customers to perform transactions that may normally require a bank teller. These self-service kiosks helps in performing tasks like account opening, cash or cheque depositing, passbook updating, personalized debit/credit card printing, statement printing etc. All the major banks in the world today are investing upon the technology and omni channel. Phy-gital is the new term which seems to be popping up as a major head for the banks and other financial institutions today. These self-service kiosk for banking is one of the key component which is driving the wave of the Omni Channel in this particular industry. Banks have installed these kiosk at major points where most of the traffic is generated such as at cheque deposits – Cheque Deposit Kiosk, Cash deposits – Cash Deposit Kiosk, other miscellaneous activities – Multi Function Kiosk, passbook update – Passbook Printing Kiosk, account opening – Account Opening Kiosk, request for new Debit/Credit card – Card Printing Kiosk, request for cheque book – Cheque book Printing kiosk.

With the introduction of ATMs the need for a customer to stand in the line for hours to withdraw cash from their account was eliminated along with the dependency on the cashier, which not only gave customers advantage of transacting as per their needs and requirement but also helped banks to shorten their queues and increase it’s physical presence. For any business or industry today the main focus is on providing exceptional customer experience on all the possible channels where customer interacts. Therefore, the new channels of interactions should provide customers an ease of carrying out their activities swiftly and have proved itself to be able to make life of both business and customers easier.

Reduced wait time

Improved customer engagement with innovative technology

Increase in operational efficiency

Gain efficiency through diverse application

Well investment in any new technology or new potential big thing needs a lot of number crunching and good research and need gap analysis. Financial viability needs to be determined before taking a decision on investing in this because creating a setup, or IT environment/infrastructure for the kiosk and later on its annual maintenance everything has a cost tagged to it. Therefore, depending on the establishments requirement and purpose the overall investment vary.

So, whenever you plan to put up a self-service terminal for your business, you need to have a clear idea about the overall installation, the main activities which you plan to divert on the kiosk, the kind of kiosk like whether it will be wall mounted kiosk, floor standing kiosk, tablet based kiosk or you want to go for bespoke design altogether plays a vital role.

The kind of peripherals i.e, Hardware requirement is directly proportional to the kind of service you want to automate and therefore the software is dependent on it.  Depending upon the complexity of the task or process the overall usage, design of the kiosk will be determined. Which directly influences the overall cost.

The next important thing to be considered while making an investment in these kiosk is maintenance cost. Maintenance cost needs to be computed while designing the budget for the kiosk, buying out from some relatively low priced suppliers can come back to you in the form of overall quality of the kiosk and working of it. You may face frequent system crashes or downtime of the system or peripheral failure and if your kiosk is to be used by general public in a high traffic setting environment then industrial level robustness is required out of it and therefore its quality and material needs to be of industry grade standard and duly certified.

For real quick demo and to understand the overall functioning and working of our self-service kiosk

Gives us a call at 91-22-4040-8080  or drop us a mail at ce.enquiries@aurionpro.com                                                                                Blogger :Swati Rai

We tried to define Queue Management System in the previous segment, continuing the same ahead,
Queue Management System platform is a collection of different modules designed to efficiently handle and manage customer requests. The platform intelligently routes the customer to a skilled representative to respond to respective tokens.
Synonyms for Queue Management System are Footfall Management, Token System or Ticketing Solution even Queuing System and Electronic Branch Management.

The moment a customer steps inside your premises, queue management system platform enables customers to powerfully connect with the concerned representative of your organization to seek appropriate solution for the required services.

Before moving further, we need to understand how exactly the routing is done and for understanding that we need to understand Queuing Theory.  Queuing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues.  A queuing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queuing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because the results are often used when making business decisions about the resources needed to provide a service.

Structured Queues­

Here people form a queue in a fixed, predictable position, such as at supermarket checkouts, and other retail locations such as banks or airport security. Very often, queue management systems are set up to manage ticket ranking for a service (with or without a numbered ticket) with identification and thus enable a serene and stress-free waiting. Extending the different possibilities, planned reception by appointment and remotely rank allocation on or through push notification can also be included.

Unstructured Queues

Where people form a queue in unpredictable and varying locations and directions. This is often the case in some forms of retail, taxi queues, ATMs and at periods of high demand in many situations. In the busiest places, physical barriers and guides are used to funnel people into a line as they arrive.

Mobile Queues

Mobile based queuing system allow customers to use their mobile phone to view real-time queue data and select a reason that they want to visit your branch/service center. Customers are free to carry on their day and don’t have to wait in a waiting area. Customers receive notifications via SMS or through push notification and when ready to be seen, they are called forward for service.

Mobile queues require the customer to install queue management apps to their phone before getting into the queue.

As mentioned earlier in the previous sections Queue Management System is an intelligent system which helps in managing the Queues of people. It allows managing flows and the purposes of visits from initial contact to the service given. These systems generates good amount of data about the customer wait time, how they wait and overall performance if the tellers. These information assists in improving organization processes and improves the overall customer journey.

Queuing Solution works upon 6 basic logic

1. Information/Appointment
2. Allocation & Direction
3. Waiting & Communication
4. Call
5. Reception
6. Management

Appointment- The first stage of the logic is Appointment or Customer Arrival, so in this stage customer seeks there appointment either by coming down directly to the branch or by booking there tickets online via web or through mobile app.

• Customer’s are notified about the wait time via Push-in texts, SMS
• When they arrive in the premise a notification alert is sent to the service teller

Allocation & Direction- The advance stage after appointment is allocation and direction, in this stage customers enter the queue either by taking a token from ticketing kiosks or activate their virtual tickets.

• Dedicated Queuing Machines/ Token Machines are installed at the strategic points where customers walks-in and gets a token for the service they want to seek teller’s assistance.
• Virtual tokens are activated once they arrive(again depending upon the mechanism and logic)
• Customer’s then generates a hard ticket where in all the information pertaining to there wait is printed. (average wait time, number of customers ahead of there turn etc.)

Wait time & Communication- After generating a ticket, customers heads to waiting area, where the brand tries to make there wait both active and interactive with interactive communication medias playing on the display screens. Once there turn comes up the message is displayed over the screen.

• Digital signage systems are placed in the waiting area, where all the promotional videos are played along with the information about the current serving tokens.
• Customer’s wait is made active and interactive at this point in time, they are informed and educated about to new products and services.
• Customer’s are informed about critical changes in the queues via SMS and push in messages or on queue management system app.

Call/ Reception-  In this stage the customers/visitors are called for their service by the service tellers. The calling is done via a software installed at the teller system’s.

• Customer’s can be called out of turn or re-direction is made.
• There are multiple call forward windows (cash, desks), a LED or video screen installed at the head of the queue displays and the number is called with a directional arrow.

Data Management- The branch managers or the cluster heads have access to the data generated by the queue management system. The data generated are in the form of statistical reports equipped with tables-graphs, a complete information about time periods, waiting times, service times, reason for customer visit, teller performance is presented in the reports. These reports are generated on a real time basis and helps branch managers to understand overall functioning of the there branch.

When you’re doing something you love time seems to fly by, but if you’re bored to tears, minutes can seem like hours and as it was mentioned earlier customer start to loose there patience after 13 mins . And what’s more boring than waiting in a queue? Despite this era of fast-paced and instant service, one cannot escape lining up at the doctors, at the bank, to pay bills or to buy groceries. In a commercial world that revolves around customers, effective queue management is very crucial and technology plays a vital role in this regard. It equips businesses to manage customers effectively even during rush hour and peak season. Therefore these are some of the benefits of the queue management system-

Faster Processing

Queue Management system takes care of customers’ needs, right from their arrival at the branch to the time their service requirement is fulfilled at the respective counter. It also helps customers select the service required through their phone or any electronic device. The customer then has the convenience of movement while maintaining their position in the queue as he receives a ticket that displays a number. The customers can also gauge their waiting time.

Improved Productivity & Operational Efficiencies

An effective queue control system can lead to a significant improvement in an organization’s service efficiency. When queuing, customers are dealt with at a fast and efficient pace and fewer staff members are required which frees up staff time to deal with other essential matters.

Enhanced Customer Experience

‘The customer is king’ and keeping customers happy is the ultimate business goal. Queue Management Kiosk provide the functionalities of allotting and printing tickets for customers to help them enjoy the benefits of a virtual queuing system. Customers are connected to the interactive visual media while they wait to be assisted. With Customer Feedback Devices attached to QMS, organizations can get instant customer feedback. This data is further utilized to enhance customer experience and services.

Higher Engagement

It helps provides a systematic method to monitor staff performance in a streamlined, hands-free process. The goal is to enhance the service quality and save your organization’s time and money by completing tedious tasks automatically. In turn, this increases the productivity of your employees by allowing them to focus on their core areas of talent.

Queue Management Systems can be used at any location experiencing a significant footfall. This includes Airports, Hospitals, Banks, Retail stores, Government, Utilities, Service Centers as well as Universities.

Bank and Insurance

In Banking branches are considered to be one of the most powerful channel to provide there end customers with high-touch, person-to-person experiences.  The branch experience influences customer satisfaction more than any other channels. Therefore to keep this satisfaction level up to the point, Banking and Insurance need to think about ways to reduce there customer’s wait time and improve there overall satisfaction which can be done by installing a Queue Management System. Know More > >

Government 

Government agencies are not only increasingly looking to improve customer service levels but they are making active efforts to enhance Citizen’s Experience. Electronic Queuing System is a step towards making citizen experience more favorable for government office visitors/customers. The system smartly manages queues at any customer interaction point making your service more customer centric. Know More > >

Healthcare

Waiting is one of the biggest pain points in the healthcare care industry. Therefore for hospitals and clinics the most critical areas that needs to be exceptionally well designed and well managed is Patient Flow.  An efficient Patient Flow Management can directly impact the bottom line, thus it is necessary to provide a streamlined customer service along with high quality healthcare service. Know More > >

Utility

The Customer Care Centers for most of the utility sectors is always flooded with the customers waiting in queue for either paying bills or to solve queries. Queue Management System in such setup would not help the brands to manage customer queue but will also provide an insight to the brands about their teller’s productivity. Know More > >

Retail

Queue Management in retail is just not limited to in-store management but it starts from the point the customer decides to shop-visit. Appointment booking modules like mobile app, website booking etc. plays an important role in this. Know More > >

Telecom

Telecom experience a heavy customer flow generally in there customer care centers or internal helpdesks, therefore to manage that customer queue as well as providing customers with seamless experience queue management system for customer care centers or retail outlets are necessary. Know More > >

With abundance of data collected by an effective queue management system, the main task now is to deduce logical inferences out of these accumulated data. There are various dashboards and reports which gives a 360° view of the entire functioning of the branch right from the number of customers waiting in the queue to service time or idle time of each teller. Management can decide upon the best and worst performing branches and take adequate measures.

When we talk about data, there are three major heads where we can account these data-

• Average number of customer’s waiting in the queue
• Average wait time
• Average service time

After reading the entire article you would come out of following questions-

How will your business be benefited with queue management solution?

Queue Management System not only helps in managing queues, but also provide your business with an insight on different key elements like customer’s queue, employee’s performance and overall branch working. Which ultimately helps you to manage your customer queue and overall working of the branch.

Setup and Installation

Setup and installations are real quick, there is no real extra investment in terms of IT infrastructure one needs to spend upon. Aurionpro’s OptiQ is quite easy to understand and operate and there’s little or no technical knowledge required to operate it.

Quick Demo of the Queue Management System!!

For real quick demo and to understand the overall functioning and working of an advance Queue Management System
gives us a call at 91-22-4040-8080  or drop us a mail at ce.enquiries@aurionpro.com