By: Chris Fravel, Marketing Specialist for KioWare Kiosk System Software
COVID-19 has shifted the way society views cleanliness and personal hygiene. There is a new importance placed upon these principles that many people are prioritising over everything else in their day-to-day activities as evidenced by industries shifting to a mostly work-from-home-style schedule. When people aren’t in the safety of their own homes, it’s not uncommon to see them regularly applying hand sanitiser, wearing masks in public areas, and keeping an appropriate social distance from other people; habits that were not commonly seen before the global pandemic of 2020.
That begs the question as to how businesses can maintain regular operations while also keeping in mind the newfound importance of minimising the spread of bacteria. A growing number of businesses is discovering that implementing a touchless interface to their self-service kiosks covers most of those bases. This is how a touchless kiosk interface does it:
- A touchless kiosk interface allows for the same interaction without physically contacting the surface of the self-service device. Minimising the amount of contact an end-user has with your self-service kiosk is one thing, eliminating it is another thing entirely. This can be accomplished by scanning a QR code to access a secure connection between the kiosk device and the end-user’s personal mobile device.
- Maintaining a self-service kiosk option allows end-users to avoid person-to-person contact with your human workers. Over the past few months, researchers have narrowed down the most common way to transmit COVID-19: person-to-person. It is estimated that interactions between unmasked COVID-19 carriers and unmasked healthy individuals have a 90% chance of resulting in a healthy individual becoming infected. Masks greatly reduce the spread of infection but do not eliminate it, so providing self-service options to minimise person-to-person interactions where possible is essential.
- Implementing a touchless kiosk solution helps the sanitisation supply chain recover. Over the past five months, it has been extremely difficult to purchase cleaning and sanitisation supplies. These products have been in such high demand to maintain a level of social cleanliness that suppliers have been operating on a perpetual back-order status since the start of the pandemic, and an alternate solution could alleviate some of that stress on the supply chain. Allowing people to interact with a kiosk through their own personal device will create a gap where products like hand sanitiser or sanitising wipes would normally be used to reduce the chance of pathogen spread.
There is certainly more than one way to accomplish this, but the ideal touchless interface would allow an end-user to interact directly with a kiosk via their personal mobile device by scanning a QR code that is displayed on the attract screen. At that point, a trackpad-style mouse would be displayed on the end-user’s device, giving them complete control of the kiosk’s screen functions. The trackpad would be responsive to clicks, swipes, and all other normal mouse functions. If a field requires text to be entered, a simple click of the trackpad into the text field would bring up a keyboard on the end-user’s device, allowing them to enter text. At the conclusion of the user’s session, the software could, ideally, be programmed to display content of the kiosk deployer’s choosing such as a website, loyalty app, newsletter, or a simple “thank you” message.
It is important to remember when implementing a touchless solution that an end-user’s experience should not be greatly altered. The only difference should be how it is manipulated — i.e. via the end-user’s device rather than touching the kiosk screen.
The world around us is changing. People are viewing the world through a new lens, one that emphasises the importance of reducing germ and pathogen spread. This new perspective means businesses need to be creative with accommodating the sanitary desires of its customers. Creating a touchless experience with a seamless interface on self-service kiosks will be crucial to thriving in this new era of limited human interaction and higher standards of cleanliness and sanitation. Are you prepared?
