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Retail Self-Service Kiosks: Innovation Continues

24m · COMMERCE NOW · 23 Aug 18:17

Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, Elliot Maras, editor from Kiosk Marketplace and Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced Self-Service Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf discuss the continuation of innovation in retail self-service and how self-service can offer a better customer experience.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/retail/solutions/self-service/innovation

Related Links:

Kiosk Marketplace.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

Retail Customer Experience.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

LinkedIn Profiles -

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Transcription: 

Speaker 1:                           In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, our very own Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced Self-Service Solutions, joins Elliott Maras, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace, where they will discuss self-service innovations, and how [00:00:30] retailers rely on self-service for a better customer experience.

Elliott Maras:                       Welcome to self-serve kiosks. The innovation continues. The consumers have spoken. Not a day goes by that a new self-service solution is not introduced.

                                                In recent years, restaurants have taken a very visible role, introducing self-serve kiosks. In addition, retailers, from high-end department stores to supermarkets [00:01:00] to convenience stores, are relying on kiosks to serve customers faster and offer a better customer experience.

                                                This past year, COVID-19 avoidance of human to human interaction has pushed retailers to offer more self-serve kiosks. I'm Elliott Maris, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace. Joining me today is Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced [00:01:30] Self-Service Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf.

                                                Matt, how did we get here? What did retailers see, that made self-service journeys so necessary?

Matt Redwood:                I think one word really kind of encapsulates the journey that retailers have been on with self-service, and that's flexibility. When you look at the journey that we've been on as an industry with self-service, in the very early days, it was very much about [00:02:00] removing cost, removing labor, from the front end.

                                                If you look at why retailers are really deploying self-service now, and how they're deploying them, it's really more focused on how they can deliver a much more flexible operating model within their stores. So rather than stripping staff out of the stores as a cost saving, they actually redistribute those staff. Because what they've realized is we've got to a critical mass now, where consumers want, demand, and expect a self-service offering in the [00:02:30] store. They very much see it as a faster, easier way of checking out in a store, that gives them much more control over the interaction with that retailer.

                                                And that's a very, very important point, because if the consumer is demanding that, the retailer no longer has to push that as an offering that that is being driven by their own demands, and what that means is they can then take staff that would ordinarily be serving the customer, and they can put them into other parts of the store, to deliver the best consumer [00:03:00] experience. So if you look, a lot of data, particularly around self-serve kiosks, some of the bugbears of consumers is that they have to queue to check out or interact at the front end, or there isn't staff where they want it, either in the aisles or in the main body of the store, where they expect a good level of service. And self-service really ticks those box, because it allows retailers to put higher density of checkouts or order points [00:03:30] within the store. That in turn will reduce the amount of queues, increase the throughput through the store, so you get a better consumer experience, and it frees up staff to then go and provide a different functionality within the store, or a consumer experience, better consumer experience elsewhere in the store.

                                                So it really delivers against the two big bugbears of the consumer, as well as gives the retailer much greater flexibility, and I think the flexibility piece has really been [00:04:00] key over the last 18 months, in terms of, if you look at the different changes in rules and regulations and shopping habits and consumer trends that retailers have had to contend with, the self-service device has really given them much greater flexibility to be able to deal with those changing trends on a daily basis.

Elliott Maras:                       Are successful retailers done, after they've implemented self-service across their footprint?

Matt Redwood:                Absolutely not. So, the [00:04:30] really interesting thing about self-service, is that it bridges two very fast-moving industries.

                                                One is consumers, consumer expectations, consumer trends, and the second is technology, and if you think about those two entities, they both move at an incredibly fast speed, and what that means is the retailer has to constantly move. They have to constantly change. They have to constantly adapt. They have to constantly upgrade and evolve their experience [00:05:00] within their stores, to keep up with both technology that's moving extremely quickly, but also consumer demands, which evolve extremely quickly. So I don't think there's ever a self-service environment or deployment that sits still for a very, very long period of time. It's a constantly evolving, constantly changing landscape, and retailers have really got to stay on top of that.

                                                If you look at the marketplace today, it's very much about differentiation. So it's [00:05:30] not just about putting self-service devices into a store. It's now about putting the right self-service combination for your store, and actually tailoring that offering to that particular store. But more than that, what other innovation or other technologies can you bolt on to self-service, to enrich that consumer experience even even further? And I think there's a bit of a race at the moment for differentiation and consumer experience, so retailers are constantly looking, constantly evolving, [00:06:00] constantly adding to the self-service experience, to try and differentiate themselves and their brand from their competition.

Elliott Maras:                       If expectations from consumers are to be more in control and achieve greater speed and efficiency, how can a retailer improve an existing self-service journey?

Matt Redwood:                So I think there's a couple of things to look at here. Obviously, a retailer will always want to sweat the asset for as long a period as possible, [00:06:30] but trends change. As I said, consumer trends change, technology trends change, and just expectations in terms of service offering changes within a store. So there's a lot a retailer can do to constantly evolve the self-service devices that they currently have in store.

                                                I always say, which is sometimes an unpopular opinion, that the technology is easy, but getting a self-service device up and running is the easiest bit. Operationalizing that technology is the bit that really delivers the most amount of value. And if you [00:07:00] think about the moving parts associated with operationalizing a device within the store, it may be changes to staff, or efficiency of staff, and maybe different consumers, different proficiency levels, different times of the day, therefore different peak or different stresses on that particular store, and there's a lot that retailers can do operationally to improve the performance of the devices within the store.

                                                The second piece is evolving the actual technology, and if you think about [00:07:30] a common trend that's talked about a lot, cash, the demise of cash, everyone talks about the demise of cash, but if you look at cash utilization from a global perspective, it's disappearing or not disappearing at different rates in different mar

The episode Retail Self-Service Kiosks: Innovation Continues from the podcast COMMERCE NOW has a duration of 24:03. It was first published 23 Aug 18:17. The cover art and the content belong to their respective owners.

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Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast. In here is your host, Ryan Mac

Ryan:

Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast, I'm your host Ryan Mac. Now, debit is the most popular form of payment in the US and globally and it is influenced by the growing popularity of digital payments and preferences of millennials. Now, it is projected that debit transactions will continue to grow and remain the highest transaction type of consumer payment. Now, modernizing these payment systems will become table stakes. And solutions that have reusable technology that can support multiple channels are key when implemented in phases, especially when starting with one that has the high rewards and low risks, AKA debit. To unpack this further, I'm joined by Steve Creamer, who is the Director of Sales for the Payments Division at Diebold Nixdorf and Sarah Grotta who is the Director of the Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisor Group. So, there's certainly a lot of information to unpack on today's episode.

Ryan:

So, without any further delays, let's start the show. So, Steve and Sarah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode. And I'm really excited to talk about our subject to hear today that's really focusing around debit because of all of the interesting news and statistics that we've started to see come out of just the debit side of the paintings' ecosystem here. Now, to get our conversation started here today, we've got this fantastic chart provided to us by Mercator Advisor Group that's taking a look at MasterCard and Visa Debit and prepaid volumes versus credit and charge card volumes in the United States. So, Steven, if you could, maybe you could kind of unpack this chart for our audience here today and maybe pull out some of the kind of the key highlights or what you find interesting of what this data is representing.

Steve:

Thanks, Ryan. In seeing this data, I really had to pause for a moment and let this information sink in. It certainly is very interesting that in United States, the dollar amount spent with debit cards increased by 14% in 2020, and also that debit card transactions continued to outpace credit cards two to one, the terms of number of transactions. We may all have our own personal bias on preference between debit and credit and some of us may have a preference for using credit over debit for certain types of transactions, but we need to be careful not to our own views, to administer relevance of the data on the continued strong debit usage.

Steve:

Did the impact of the pandemic and stimulus money have some impact on increase of debit usage in 2020? I think it did, but I also think that the pandemic also accelerated the consumer migration to digital payment channels and debit is still the most popular form of retail payment, and it's not going away at any time soon. Once you really look at the information that Sarah summarized so well, it really makes a lot of sense, especially when including the influence of younger generations that are growing in importance and how debit is leveraged on a global basis. Close to 83% of younger consumers use a debit card and not credit and that's understandable at their age. Many may have not had the ability to obtain credit, and they also seen or heard so many negative stories about how credit card debt that they formulate a consumer behavior outside of credit usage.

Steve:

Given the high percentage use of debit now, and with the ever-growing payment e-commerce options, we can really see why debit usage continues to grow. An important note is that the continued popular debit is by no means unique to United States. For instance, in India, I think there are 900 million debit cards versus only 55 million credit cards. And in Europe it varies by country, but debit continues to make a very, very strong showing. From a consumer convenience standpoint, we can see the advantages of using debit over other payment rails. And then finally for the retailer, there are real economic advantages of debit based processing solutions as debit interchange fees are typically much lower than for credit cards. I think at this point, it probably be good to turn over to Sarah and allow her to provide some additional insights into her report.

Sarah:

Yeah. Thanks so much for that. And really, I liked your overview, particularly the comparison with other countries. Certainly, I think the US is somewhat unique in its history, its legacy of being very credit card-focused that isn't necessarily the case around the world. And certainly, things like the economics play into that. The fact that particularly in the US, we really, really love those credit card rewards. So, it was kind of interesting, I agree, I think this was really pushed by the pandemic when we saw the debit card volumes for the first time tip over in above the credit card numbers. And let me clarify, looking at this chart, that we are looking at debit card purchases. We did make some calculations to extract some of the debit push payments, right? So, that would be MasterCard send or Visa Direct.

Sarah:

So, we're really looking at something closer to an apples-apples comparison of just debit card purchases from MasterCard and Visa in comparison to what's happening on the credit card side. So, I think as we look forward and as we start to see purchasing habits maybe coming back to something that looked a little bit more like pre-pandemic patterns, so more things like purchases for eating out purchases, for travel in particular, I think that we'll start to see the credit card numbers start to come back up again. But I do think for many of the reasons that you pointed out Steve, I think that we will still continue to see very, very strong debit card growth for the foreseeable future.

Ryan:

Steven and Sarah, thank you so much for that. Now, to kind of just recap a lot of what was said there, obviously historically, in the US we have seen debit cards outpace credit in terms of transaction volumes. But also, then as we were kind of pointing out, in 2020, we did see that percentage gap changed dramatically with debit card volume seeing that 14% growth over 2019 numbers. Now, Steven, as you pointed out, I think that there's a fair amount of that double digit growth was related and due to the pandemic. And as Sarah kind of stated there at the end that she foresees this growth in debit being a continuing trend. But beyond the pandemic, are there other reasons that you could kind of sight or maybe glean to, of why it is that debit may remain a preferred payment method of choice for consumers?

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Yeah. Ryan, I think that's a great question. And in that, I think it's always important to keep the customer experience in the forefront. And the thing about debit is that it's a 24/7 always-on experience. Consumers expect to seamlessly get cash out of, if they're using an ATM or if they're making a purchase, they expect it to be approved right away. And that's true if it's in-person or if it's a debit being used online. As noted in Sarah's report, 40% of debit transactions, I think in US were made in a card-not-present mode. So, consumers want to make sure their cards and data are safe and that they can quickly pay for what they want. But what we're hearing from our customers, both banks and retailers, but primarily the banks, are that the debit networks are being challenged with new payment types and they're spending a lot of time and money on the overall upkeep and maintenance of their debit networks.

Steve:

As you know, the debit system has been around since the early 1970s and many of the systems that are used to process these cards have really not changed since, or if they have, it's been for band aid updates for their old technology. Legacy debit payment platforms were designed to quickly and securely approve and process of payment or withdrawal, which has always been authenticated with a card. The future payments

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Speaker 2:                        [00:00:30] Welcome to the Payments Journal podcast. And here is your host, Ryan Mack.

Ryan Mack:                      Welcome to the Payments Journal podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Mack.

                                           Increasingly we're seeing the payment become implicit in the transactions of all kinds of services. To be explicit, the payment is being made invisible. You can get a ride, a coffee, and a lot more, without pulling out your cash or a credit card.

                                           As more and more services start to offer their [00:01:00] own payment schemes to ease friction for consumers, introduce loyalty, lower costs, and generate additional revenue streams, traditional banks, processors, and card issuers are being reduced or even eliminated. This trend heralds the tipping point in the ongoing struggle for banks and issuers to remain relevant. The new business model being forced upon the traditional banking stalwarts is making them rethink everything from time to market, to which emerging payment methods to accept.

                                           As payments become more frictionless, the banking industry struggles [00:01:30] with how to cultivate and maintain customer loyalty. Consumers can choose from multiple payment alternatives, even when their bank doesn't offer it as a service. So to unpack this topic in further detail, I have Jens Audenaert, who is the SVP and GM of payments at Diebold Nixdorf, and Tim Sloane, the VP of payments innovation at Mercator Advisor Group.

                                           There's certainly a lot to unpack on today's episode, so without any further delays, let's start the show.

                                           So Jens and Tim, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode, where [00:02:00] we're taking a deep dive into an important question that's going on in the industry, and one that I don't think I would've ever thought that I would have had to ask here, and it's banks maintaining relevancy in this new payments landscape.

                                           So Jens, I want to start with you for the first question. So taking a look at the payments industry, what are some of the key trends that you're seeing in banking and payments today?

Jens Audenaert:              Sure. And first of all, thanks Ryan for having me on the podcast, Tim, it's great to be here with you.

                                           I think when we think [00:02:30] about trends in the payment space, there's obviously a lot of them, but one of the key trends that we've been seeing for a number of years now is really the dramatic rise of digital payment vehicles and the associated transaction volumes. And like many things digital, that's been accelerated in the last 18 months because of the COVID pandemic. We've seen contactless transaction volumes go through the roof. But again, it's been an underlying foundational trend that we've seen for a number of years.

                                           And a lot of it has to with [00:03:00] consumer expectations, really. If you think about how people buy goods and services these days in many instances, you don't even think about the payment anymore. You can buy a coffee through an app, you can get a car service through an app. And so consumers have really started to expect these very seamless, integrated payment experiences.

                                           And I think that's very relevant for retail banks, because a lot of those experiences are being delivered by fintech, by neo-banks. And [00:03:30] so for retail banks, they really have to think through, how do we remain relevant when a consumer doesn't really necessarily associate their card or their primary bank with that payment transaction? That's obviously a threat to retail banks, but it's also an enormous opportunity for them to think through, how do we adapt in a way that we can actually offer these additional services to our consumers?

Tim Sloane:                      I totally agree with that. As payments become invisible and merchants want to make [00:04:00] payments invisible, you see the card on file volume starting to move to an environment where automatic acceptance is done. You also have voice payments taking place in an increasingly large environment, where they talk to their Amazon Alexa or their Google speaker, and they're asking for something to be delivered, it's delivered automatically, and the payment becomes invisible. So [00:04:30] how a financial institution can drive itself to be top of wallet in those environments is critical. And that's what's happening now. Further off, we see things shifting to IOT type payments where it's entirely automated and decisions are being made by the machine.

Ryan Mack:                      Yeah. And one thing to kind of point to there. I mean, Tim, you brought up in terms of invisible payments, and I certainly think that that is a very interesting component of this as well too. But every time I hear the term invisible [00:05:00] payments, I also think invisible brands as well too. Which, to Jens, you were talking about there as well too, kind of from a financial institution perspective. And it is okay, well, how do we ensure that our brand still remains relevant to our audience and our clients and our members today? So the next question then that I've got for you, Jens, if I could start with you, is how do you think banks will really maintain their stickiness with the consumers when the trend is really kind of moving away from, as we were talking about there, even being associated with the payment [00:05:30] part of it?

Jens Audenaert:              Yeah, it's a great question. And Tim, I loved how you phrased that as well.

                                           I think for a bank it's really around, when you think about remaining relevant, it's making sure that you're actually funding and processing those transactions for your consumers. And so it's really staying abreast and keeping up with the innovation that's expected of the banks.

                                           And sadly, if you think about the ever increasing rate of change in the space, if banks look internally, many banks are actually realizing that they have a decades old infrastructure, [00:06:00] old code, very monolithic, millions of lines of code, and it's really, really hard to adapt to the trends in the market. And so I think this is where banks really have to think around what's the infrastructure that I need so that I can very easily adapt to the changes that we see in the market and that I can actually meet consumer expectations. And that's really hard with the old technology.

                                           So this is where having technology that can be deployed in the cloud, if it's microservices, [00:06:30] architecture enabled and API first, things that are really easy to adapt, that's really what's going to be important here. At the end of the day, it's about being able to test and design and deploy new services for your consumers in a matter of weeks or months. And many retail banks today, that could be a process that takes over a year. And so it's really that agility that banks have to work on and have to look at when they think about modernizing their technology infrastructure.

Tim Sloane:                      I totally agree with you. If you take [00:07:00] a look at what it costs, when Uber was on the rise, you saw Capital One, Discover, Amex, offering $20 or more if a consumer would put their card into that mobile app. And that's a significant amount of money that they're trying to use marketing dollars to become top of wallet. But that's not sustainable. Those cards are going to churn, not just at the end of the card life, but when [00:07:30] lost, stolen, or something else happens and the card has to be replaced. And so if they haven't moved to a tokenized infrastructure that enables that card on file to remain a

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Jerry:                     Hello everyone and thanks for listening in. I would like to welcome today's guest Bill Inzeo Product and Solutions Global Strategy for Zebra Technologies. Welcome Bill. Thanks for joining me today.

Bill Inzeo:            Thank you for having me.

Jerry:                     And we're also fortunate to [00:00:30] have Anja Popp with us. Anya is our senior analyst in Market Intelligence here at Diebold Nixdorf. Thank you Anya for joining us.

Anja Popp:          Thank you, Jerry. It's my pleasure to be here.

Jerry:                     So let's get started. Retail in the shopping experience has changed tremendously during today's challenging environments. Some changes were brought on by technological advances with the now common mobile devices. Other changes were forced by a global pandemic as consumers rethink their own shopping needs. Regardless of the reason we've experienced accelerated changes to [00:01:00] the consumer and staff journeys that retailers need to contend with. Let's start with the technology portion. Are shoppers drawn to certain technologies that a retailer provides? Bill, what's your take?

Bill Inzeo:            Yeah, I think that's absolutely the case. Technologies that can provide really any level of convenience to the customers can be a draw and look no further than the checkout experience in retail in particular. There's customers that are going to select a retailer or certain retailers, not only for the types of products that they sell, but also for the [00:01:30] way in which they can actually conduct their shopping trip, especially in a post-pandemic environment where options like self-checkout are going to appeal to a subset of customers in a way that looks different today than it did in 2019, because there's a whole personal safety aspect and element to that decision-making.

Jerry:                     Interesting. Anja, what are your thoughts on it?

Anja Popp:          Yeah, that's a great question, Jerry. And thanks for the insight from Bill as well. I would say yes, shoppers are drawn to certain technologies. At least if retailers manage to build an experience [00:02:00] that corresponds with each shopper's core motivation behind adopting a solution. So maybe if I may add a little color to my response, so we were specifically digging into technology adoption in the grocery segment. We had 15,000 grocery shopper voices from 15 countries in there. And based on all these data points, we were working with Nielson as our research partner to conduct a segmentation analysis. And that analysis actually returned five core motivations that influence [00:02:30] shopper interest in retail technology. And that would be ease. So really ease of use, simplicity.

                                The self-sufficiency part. So some shoppers really have a core motivation to be very self-determined in their shopper journey. It's the information part or the information motivation, and both self-sufficiency and information are actually also have a strong correlation to efficiency by the way. There's trust, as the fourth motivator. And then there's new and exciting experiences. [00:03:00] There's also one strong obstacle that I see that retailers need to overcome for technology adoption. And that is simply long-standing habits. That always has to be put into the equation as well.

Jerry:                     Those are great insights. It's always interesting to see the march of technological advances and how it affects consumers and retailers alike. What about force changes now? COVID forced all consumers to rethink their needs, journeys, and what their expectations are. What's been impacted the most from this? Anja, what interesting findings [00:03:30] did we find with the Diebold Nixdorf/Nielsen survey learned from consumers? Did we see a change when we surveyed before COVID versus a year later?

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                                So we saw double digit shares of respondents that have turned to self-checkout for the first time during the COVID pandemic, even in countries where the technology is already established for quite a while. So maybe I can [00:04:30] use the US as an example here. So we saw well over 20% of our respondents stating that they started using self-checkouts since the pandemic, and that's bringing total adoption in the US up to over 80% actually. The core reason for that remaining small group of non-users was actually that they are simply used to the staff checkout. So you remember, I stated in my first response to you that longstanding habits are a motivation that retailers always have to put into the equation for designing successful [00:05:00] roll-outs.

Jerry:                     I really love this data and I get to see it happen all the time. My wife can't stand self-checkout, but during the pandemic I think she followed your data. She went to it because of those concerns and she changed her behavior based on that. It was something she didn't do before and afterwards she tends to do more often. We learn more and more every time we ask the consumer direct questions. I love it. Bill, what are you seeing today?

Bill Inzeo:            What Anja and I have been seeing [00:05:30] is very similar. When we're talking to our customers at Zebra and hearing from them, the challenges that they're helping their customers with, we continue to confirm, I think what everybody's keenly aware of, which is that the pandemic has been an accelerator of nearly all aspects of our lives generally. And that includes the tech savviness of the customers and the shift in how they are interacting with the retailers and how they're shopping. And that shifts in business to online shopping. And then beyond just the shift [00:06:00] to online shopping to the in-store or curbside pickup modalities, really out of necessity for our personal safety was the equivalent of a once in a lifetime accelerant. Well, we hope once in a lifetime.

                                And I think the motivation behind ensuring our own personal safety and the pathway to that being technology has changed not just how the customers think about how to leverage technology, but it's also putting the retailers in a position where they're starting to reconsider how they're going to leverage technology in the new normal, [00:06:30] and then help their customers along the way. And that additional layer of options for those customers, both to shop online and then pick up in the store in several different ways has created a new complexity for the retailers at their operation that they're still really wrestling with right now. And technology is going to be one of the many and probably the leading solution to that new complexity.

Jerry:                     Yeah, totally agree. There's no doubt the benefit technology brings to the shopping experience and store operations. However, and this is personal to me, [00:07:00] I'm a big believer in focusing on adoption rather than just implementation. You want consumers to prefer this new method. And that means taking it beyond just installation and technically working. How should retailers adjust their thinking to achieve success? Bill, as one of the leading technology providers what insights can you share from your experiences?

Bill Inzeo:            Well, I can tell you that at the end of the day, it's all about value. It always is, and it'll always be about the value of the technology to the customer. [00:07:30] As we've been discussing, we've seen a level of technology adoption sooner than we would have had we not had this global pandemic occur. And that adoption level that we've seen in the shift that we're monitoring, and we're starting to see continue to show up in our customers, is likely to maintain and if not continue to expand. So from there, it's really just a matter of building on that new adoption. So the building blocks will be comprised of value components. And Anja talked to some of these, convenience, [00:08:00] personal safety, which has a completely new definition to customers. The financial value, so how can the technology bring savings to the customers? And the ease of use. If it feels like unnecessary bells and whistles, it may feel too

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https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/retail/solutions/self-service/innovation

Related Links:

Kiosk Marketplace.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

Retail Customer Experience.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

LinkedIn Profiles -

Matt Redwood
Elliot Maras

Transcription: 

Speaker 1:                           In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, our very own Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced Self-Service Solutions, joins Elliott Maras, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace, where they will discuss self-service innovations, and how [00:00:30] retailers rely on self-service for a better customer experience.

Elliott Maras:                       Welcome to self-serve kiosks. The innovation continues. The consumers have spoken. Not a day goes by that a new self-service solution is not introduced.

                                                In recent years, restaurants have taken a very visible role, introducing self-serve kiosks. In addition, retailers, from high-end department stores to supermarkets [00:01:00] to convenience stores, are relying on kiosks to serve customers faster and offer a better customer experience.

                                                This past year, COVID-19 avoidance of human to human interaction has pushed retailers to offer more self-serve kiosks. I'm Elliott Maris, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace. Joining me today is Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced [00:01:30] Self-Service Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf.

                                                Matt, how did we get here? What did retailers see, that made self-service journeys so necessary?

Matt Redwood:                I think one word really kind of encapsulates the journey that retailers have been on with self-service, and that's flexibility. When you look at the journey that we've been on as an industry with self-service, in the very early days, it was very much about [00:02:00] removing cost, removing labor, from the front end.

                                                If you look at why retailers are really deploying self-service now, and how they're deploying them, it's really more focused on how they can deliver a much more flexible operating model within their stores. So rather than stripping staff out of the stores as a cost saving, they actually redistribute those staff. Because what they've realized is we've got to a critical mass now, where consumers want, demand, and expect a self-service offering in the [00:02:30] store. They very much see it as a faster, easier way of checking out in a store, that gives them much more control over the interaction with that retailer.

                                                And that's a very, very important point, because if the consumer is demanding that, the retailer no longer has to push that as an offering that that is being driven by their own demands, and what that means is they can then take staff that would ordinarily be serving the customer, and they can put them into other parts of the store, to deliver the best consumer [00:03:00] experience. So if you look, a lot of data, particularly around self-serve kiosks, some of the bugbears of consumers is that they have to queue to check out or interact at the front end, or there isn't staff where they want it, either in the aisles or in the main body of the store, where they expect a good level of service. And self-service really ticks those box, because it allows retailers to put higher density of checkouts or order points [00:03:30] within the store. That in turn will reduce the amount of queues, increase the throughput through the store, so you get a better consumer experience, and it frees up staff to then go and provide a different functionality within the store, or a consumer experience, better consumer experience elsewhere in the store.

                                                So it really delivers against the two big bugbears of the consumer, as well as gives the retailer much greater flexibility, and I think the flexibility piece has really been [00:04:00] key over the last 18 months, in terms of, if you look at the different changes in rules and regulations and shopping habits and consumer trends that retailers have had to contend with, the self-service device has really given them much greater flexibility to be able to deal with those changing trends on a daily basis.

Elliott Maras:                       Are successful retailers done, after they've implemented self-service across their footprint?

Matt Redwood:                Absolutely not. So, the [00:04:30] really interesting thing about self-service, is that it bridges two very fast-moving industries.

                                                One is consumers, consumer expectations, consumer trends, and the second is technology, and if you think about those two entities, they both move at an incredibly fast speed, and what that means is the retailer has to constantly move. They have to constantly change. They have to constantly adapt. They have to constantly upgrade and evolve their experience [00:05:00] within their stores, to keep up with both technology that's moving extremely quickly, but also consumer demands, which evolve extremely quickly. So I don't think there's ever a self-service environment or deployment that sits still for a very, very long period of time. It's a constantly evolving, constantly changing landscape, and retailers have really got to stay on top of that.

                                                If you look at the marketplace today, it's very much about differentiation. So it's [00:05:30] not just about putting self-service devices into a store. It's now about putting the right self-service combination for your store, and actually tailoring that offering to that particular store. But more than that, what other innovation or other technologies can you bolt on to self-service, to enrich that consumer experience even even further? And I think there's a bit of a race at the moment for differentiation and consumer experience, so retailers are constantly looking, constantly evolving, [00:06:00] constantly adding to the self-service experience, to try and differentiate themselves and their brand from their competition.

Elliott Maras:                       If expectations from consumers are to be more in control and achieve greater speed and efficiency, how can a retailer improve an existing self-service journey?

Matt Redwood:                So I think there's a couple of things to look at here. Obviously, a retailer will always want to sweat the asset for as long a period as possible, [00:06:30] but trends change. As I said, consumer trends change, technology trends change, and just expectations in terms of service offering changes within a store. So there's a lot a retailer can do to constantly evolve the self-service devices that they currently have in store.

                                                I always say, which is sometimes an unpopular opinion, that the technology is easy, but getting a self-service device up and running is the easiest bit. Operationalizing that technology is the bit that really delivers the most amount of value. And if you [00:07:00] think about the moving parts associated with operationalizing a device within the store, it may be changes to staff, or efficiency of staff, and maybe different consumers, different proficiency levels, different times of the day, therefore different peak or different stresses on that particular store, and there's a lot that retailers can do operationally to improve the performance of the devices within the store.

                                                The second piece is evolving the actual technology, and if you think about [00:07:30] a common trend that's talked about a lot, cash, the demise of cash, everyone talks about the demise of cash, but if you look at cash utilization from a global perspective, it's disappearing or not disappearing at different rates in different mar

DN Partners with America First Credit Union

Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, we dive into the 25 year partnership Diebold Nixdorf has with America First Credit Union. Manish Choudhary the Sr. Vice President, Software for DN talks about how important connected commerce remains for banks and credit Unions.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/portfolio/software/payments

Transcription:

Mike:           Welcome to our show and on today's program, we have Manish Choudhary from Diebold Nixdorf, Manish, How are you?

Manish:           Very good. Thanks Mike, for having me here.

Mike:           Oh my gosh. You're very welcome. We're talking today about your partnership with America First Credit Union, and Diebold Nixdorf, and just to kind of get a lay of the land here. Can you tell us about your partnership with America first and what you guys are doing?

Manish:           Absolutely. Mike, so as you know, Diebold Nixdorf, is a global technology company enabling connected commerce for banks and retailers across the globe. Serving top a hundred financial institutions, top retailers. America First is a federal credit union with almost 81 years old institution with 128 location. It has the eighth largest credit assets in the US. It's the sixth largest credit union with almost a million and one members. Diebold Nixdorf and our partnership with America First is a 25 year old partnership where we recently announced our payment software, which will drive the payment transactions and payments switching capabilities with America First. 

Mike:        Wow.  You guys have been with them for 25 years. Oh my gosh. That's quite a relationship. Well, I mean, that's congratulations right there for sure

Mike:           So let's get back to the software part of it. So how does the software, how does this work for America First? How does it benefit them?

Manish:            Yeah, so think about, I think if I were to double click on the payment conversation, so payment industry, as you know, is getting disrupted, it's getting disrupted because of new cloud technologies. It's getting disrupted because there are new real-time payment types, new contemporary payment types, which are evolving. There is innovation in speed of deployment, speed of consumption in the payment platforms and binding payment, which we've been working on is absolutely the right answer. And I'll tell you why it is probably one of the most contemporary payments, software implements payment, new payment types at speed and scale faster than anywhere else. It is a API first pure cloud native architecture. It is one of the most secure enterprise payment software available with scalable microservices. So from the credit union's perspective, it actually future proof, the technology and as the consumer behaviors are changing the credit unions as the, the consumers of the credit unions are looking for more and more new contemporary ways of doing transactions. This actually addresses today's needs, but it also addresses the future needs for America First and how the customers are going to consume some of the new payment technologies. 

Mike:           I mean, as you well know, I mean, it changes by the second. I mean, by the time this interview is done, something major will have happened in the payment space. So it's got tp be  future-proof is such a key, key aspect of technology today.

Manish:           Yeah, you're right. If you think about, you know, by the time we started talking and now there are millions and millions of new digital payments, which got processed and the banks really wanted a scalable infrastructure to actually handle those peaks and loads and balances.

Mike:           So, so how is this going to help America First, obviously, obviously they're planning for the future. They're planning, they're being flexible. How else does it help them, you know, obviously be more attractive to members and, and whatnot.

Manish:           Absolutely. So if you think about, as I mentioned, the, the consumer expectations are changing. We believe credit unions are competing with the large banks, and they're also competing with the tech coming in from mobile wallets and, you know, E transactions and others. So we at Diebold Nixdorf believe we really want to be at the right intersection of how to provide the right experience to our customers, to have them provide that experience to their customers. And in some ways, and I do believe like any other industry, the competition in credit unions that extremely high consumers switch between credit unions or banks and their, their experiences are changing. We believe the, the new payment platform really provides them. So for example, doing cardless transactions or non card based transactions, or enabling instant loans and instant payments in future or access to modern payment types,, you know, and I believe if the credit unions do not provide that somebody else will.

Manish:           So in some ways we believe that this whole payment platform and future proofing, the technology opens up all of those avenues. So while it opens up the avenues for payment, it also seamlessly extends the traditional capabilities on the ATM side. So for example, America First is, is going to use the personalized marketing campaign to serve its customers, the seamless security, which is connected to the platform on the ATM side, also comes along with it. You can walk to a ATM and without the card, you can actually do transactions by using video technology. So there's a lot of enabling technologies and options that you get created with this new platform.

Mike:           I'm liking the, what was the, the video technology with the ATM. And you can actually, how does that work?

Manish:      Yeah, so the, the, the other part of our software is the modernizing the entire ATM stack. And we call them as digital value added services. So I, you know, I usually walk to an ATM and sometimes I have my debit card and sometimes I leave it at home. I can actually walk in, press a button, talk to a teller, verify my identity, do transactions and transactions and not just deposit and withdrawals. I can E-Verify. I can possibly look at opening up an account or doing some mortgage applications, right. With the channel. Then I'm able to talk to somebody or even a better example. I would say, Mike is if you're in New York city and you have you own 10 restaurants at the end of the day, you really want to get all the cash deposited into your ATM account, without giving passwords, pin numbers and account numbers. To those 10 employees, you can actually set it up on your mobile phone, give a QR code. And the 10 people can actually deposit all of the money and they can withdraw next day morning. And they're going back to open up the restaurant. So it's just enabling these small and medium businesses and the new use cases as self-service and digitization is becoming more and more common, especially after the pandemic. 

Mike:           I was just about to ask you, have you, is this all a result? I mean, this was stuff was going to happen anyway, but it really sounds like everything was accelerated because of the pandemic, all these really cool digital offerings out there right now.

Manish:           Absolutely. Absolutely. We are seeing it globally. One of the advantage we have is, you know, the fact that you operate in a hundred countries, we can assemble the use cases and our learnings or what we are seeing. So pandemic definitely shifted. So the recent lockdowns banks migrated close to 70% of their deposits from teller to self service. And out of those 70%, almost 50% of those that actually aggregate get ATM's. Now that's a huge shift. That's a huge shift, which wouldn't have been possible. So this acceleration of digital transformation at credit unions and ATM, and I think we are at the right intersection and the technology is really, really helping in terms of accelerating those things. 

Mike:           And getting back to America First, and this is what America First is taking advantage of right now, right? So this is what they're going to be doing.

Manish:           Absolutely. I think we are really, really excited about the implementation and our teams are jointly working together. As we think about getting the lining payments, modernizing the payment infrastructure, modernizing the ATM and enabling a lot more capabilities for future like cash recycling. You know, we're extremely excited about the opportunities, which a self-serve integrated platform is able to provide you

Mike:           Good stuff, man. Any, any, anything else to wrap up? Because this is a very timely conversation obviously, and a lot of credit lines are going through this right now. Maybe not to the extent of that America First is, but I'm hoping that they will, you know, a lot of them are, a lot of them are on their digital journeys. Let's just put it that way. And, and a lot of them accelerated their digital journeys last year, but it sounds like really America First is really taking advantage of the technology out there to be not only attractive to their members, but to really, you know, compete with the big folks too.

Manish:           Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the only thing I would add to wrap up is I think, you know, we are extremely excited about this partnership. You know, we believe our, our teams, you know, my, my ambition is to really, really creating the most sophisticated payments software stack in the industry and writin

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