Self-ordering kiosks are increasing in popularity at restaurants, cafés, and all manner of food and beverage outlets. And no wonder, because they are a quick, convenient, and efficient way to collect customer orders, process payments, and improve efficiency overall. Self-service kiosks for restaurants are thriving now because they save so much of your time and most importantly, in this COVID-19 era, they lessen the need for in-person contact during the ordering process.
To maximise efficiency and convenience, there are a few essential features that a self-ordering kiosk should have.
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1. Multiple Language Selection
Having a multi-linguistic kiosk brings a lot of benefits to your restaurant, especially when you receive a lot of international visitors. For starters, it definitely helps a more diverse range of customers understand your menu and offerings without the barriers of language. This helps lead to increased user and customer satisfaction because your visitors are assured that their needs and experience are important to your restaurant.
Setting up multi-linguistic options in your kiosk will also encourage your customer to use it independently without the need for any staff assistance. Hence, this will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your kiosk in communicating with a wide pool of customers.
2. Order Customisation
Why is it important to customise your customers’ orders? Sometimes, a customer doesn’t fancy one of the ingredients in a meal and prefer to have it removed. Allowing your customers to customise their orders enable them to choose what they love best in their food, thus heightening their meal experience.
Order customisation can help them communicate their preferences to the chef without a hassle. That said, having the option to write a note to the kitchen staff is also an effective idea.
3. Complete Payment Options
The best self-ordering kiosk is one that accepts as many forms of payment as possible – whether that is a debit card or credit card, cash, digital payments, mobile wallets, and so on. You do not want to alienate any customers failing to accept a certain form of payment. For example, accepting mobile payments will be favourable to those who rely on their phones for payment and rarely go out with a wallet full of cash and cards.
If your self-ordering kiosk accepts payment, then it is only natural that it should be able to issue a receipt. Therefore, make sure that your self-ordering kiosk has the feature to print receipts as they are important to keep track of transactions for records and in case a blunder should happen.
4. A Good Management Dashboard
A management dashboard helps to assess the performance of each of the kiosks in your restaurants and identify any types of problems that may occur. It will also make it easier for you to access the data in your kiosks and manage the system smoothly.
Having a cloud-based POS system for restaurants enables you to store, monitor, and manage all data transactions to increase the accuracy of your restaurant’s performance and eventually help you make decisions to develop your business.
5. User-Friendly Display & Interface
The first thing a customer sees when they access a self-ordering kiosk is the display. It is important to have a user-friendly display to ensure that they can operate the kiosk without any help. If the display is complex and unreadable, the user will have a hard time ordering because they cannot comprehend the content of the device.
A display that imitates a tablet or a phone familiarises the user with a touchscreen function and reduces your customer’s frustration because they can easily navigate the screen. Make sure that your images and menu can be seen clearly and your buttons identifiable. If your customer has a difficult time navigating the display of your kiosk, it will decrease their speed of ordering – defeating the whole purpose of having a kiosk in the first place!
Embrace The Self-Ordering Kiosk
A positive customer experience with a self-ordering kiosk affects the rating of your business and the frequency of your customers returning to your restaurant. Having a kiosk can either make or break your business reputation, so take care to ensure that it functions to maximise efficiency and save time. Let us know your thoughts on these five essentials and feel free to share other features which you think a self-ordering kiosk should have.