Would you rather wait in line to place your order or experience no wait times when you go to a restaurant?
If you’re like the average customer, your answer would be the latter. Some restaurants often have long wait times, which can lead to inefficient service and order inaccuracies. All of these together can amount to a terrible dining experience, making many customers hesitant to eat at such a restaurant again.
Just like every other sphere of our lives, technology has found its way into the restaurant industry, offering a solution to all our ordering problems in the form of self-ordering kiosks.
What is a Self-Ordering Kiosk?
A self-ordering kiosk is a device that allows the user to place an order and make payments without the requirement for human assistance. These kiosks have proven to reduce wait times, increase order processing efficiency, and simultaneously boost revenue inflow for businesses.
This cutting-edge ordering technology is promising for customers and restaurant owners alike. Here’s why:
Advantages of Restaurant Kiosk Software
1. Contactless Ordering
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the need to maintain a reasonable social distance and limit interpersonal contact is paramount. Customers are anxious about going to a restaurant and having to interact with servers or cashiers. Self-ordering kiosks provide the perfect solution to this.
When using a kiosk, customers can practice complete social distancing while ordering. By incorporating self-ordering kiosks into their restaurants, businesses can ensure customer safety and encourage customers to eat out more.
2. Reduced Wait Times
Nobody likes waiting, but waiting has become a central part of the dining experience. Customers often have to wait in long lines before they can order their food, and this creates a tedious restaurant experience.
Self-ordering kiosks have shown to shorten and even eliminate lines, guaranteeing customers receive their food as quickly as possible.
3. Anxiety-free Ordering Experience
Many customers feel rushed and anxious when they place their order with a cashier.
The anxiety of holding up the line or the fear of other people overhearing their orders can be overwhelming for many and interfere with the customer’s ability to order exactly what they want.
Because self-ordering kiosks promise shorter lines and increased privacy, customers feel more comfortable taking their time when ordering, which ensures order accuracy and customer satisfaction.
4. Eliminate Order Inaccuracies
In a traditional ordering system, there are intermediaries such as cashiers between the customer and the kitchen. Because the order goes through a person before it enters the kitchen, often there are discrepancies, which lead to incorrect orders.
Self-ordering kiosks, however, completely eliminate these discrepancies. Customers enter their order into the kiosk, and their order proceeds directly to the back-end for preparation.
The removal of the cashier as an intermediary maximizes efficiency and accuracy.
5. Effective Upselling
Self-ordering kiosks allow for automated upselling. Automated upselling has shown to increase average revenue per ticket by 12-22 percent.
The kiosk software makes algorithmically-calculated recommendations to the customer based on previous ordering history and preferences. These personalized suggestions are often all customers need to add on more items to their order, and this generates additional revenue for the restaurant.
Bottom Line
Self-ordering kiosks have the potential to completely revolutionize the restaurant industry by empowering businesses and customers to take control of their experience.
The question is — are you ready to take your restaurant to the next level?
