The way to enhance a service is not simply to ‘throw technology at it’ but to develop innovative ways to incorporate the consumers needs into any offering, says Parveen Bansal.

Designing and developing innovative business solutions is about more than just incorporating innovative technology. In the case of consumer-facing solutions, it is about carefully balancing emerging innovative technologies with general consumer trends, and the overall value added by the new innovation.

Paul Race, innovation marketing manager at NCR Financial Solutions Division, in Dundee, says: “We look for consumer trends and then build a vision for the future and then build technology to fit the vision.

“Our methodology determines the various risks and issues associated with the new technology and balances these with consumer needs.” Future consumer trends are identified by focusing on the 15 to 25-year-old segment as the next generation of consumers.

One growing trend, according to Mr Race, is instant gratification: the ‘want it now’ generation. “This stems from broader social trends, and will clearly drive the continuing need for self-service in the future,” he says.

Mark Grossi, chief technology officer at NCR Financial Solutions Division, says this trend, together with the desire for personal service points to a move from general product advertising on self-service machines to more targeted advertising.

With the development of open architectures and web services technologies such as XML, and the move to web-based applications on the self-service terminal, it has become possible to connect the self-service applications with the back-end customer knowledge systems and thus leverage the individual customer insight to enable more targeted sales communication to each customer.

Brand recognition

Another innovative solution is the use of avatars – synthetic on-screen characters – to enable a richer user interaction model than previously possible. Avatars can be used to deliver a more personal service to the consumer at the point of sale.

This richer interface can be used to direct customers on how to complete a new transaction on the self-service machine. Mr Grossi highlights that this would be especially useful to direct consumers in the developing countries where populations have not had much exposure to technology. Avatars could be used to transfer an identifiable brand character from TV adverts to the ATM, thereby enabling continuity and consistency of brand communication across different channels. The use of targeted advertising is currently being piloted by a number of US banks. “The conversion rate of simply using targeted advertising on ATMs is significantly higher than direct mail campaigns, as noticed by some of the pilot users of NCR’s APTRA Relate software,” says Mr Grossi.

Instant gratification

The instant gratification trend is evident in the continued growth of SMS (short messaging service) usage via mobile phones. NCR is working on concepts that integrate the use of self-service machines with mobile devices.

Using SMS technology, the information from the self-service machine can by pushed to the consumer’s mobile phone. “Instead of printing a receipt the information can be pushed to the consumer’s mobile, which can then be taken home and plugged into a money management system and automatically update the books,” says Mr Grossi.

The mobile device can also be used to make the self-service machine more accessible to the blind or partially sighted consumer, who could use their device to listen to instructions. Also, information carried on the chip of the mobile could be sent to the ATM via Bluetooth technology to enable the machine to identify the user as disabled and modify the visual interface to make it easier to see.

Mr Grossi says: “Everybody at some point in their life will face an accessibility issue, be this from a broken arm or other accident, so we have to design our ATMs to be easily accessible for all according to internationally agreed standards.”

Mr Grossi highlights the massive opportunity that the widespread adoption of wireless infrastructures offers. “In emerging markets such as China and India, where new communications infrastructures are being implemented, wired technology may soon cease to exist.” Similarly, he notes that the maturing of alternative power sources (such as solar) will enable the implementation of remote, unconnected ATMs, especially useful in underdeveloped rural areas.

“The challenge when developing innovative self-service technology is the difficulty of changing consumer behaviour,” says Mr Grossi. “If an innovation is offered at the wrong time, it may be perceived as not adding sufficiently more value to the consumer and thus could risk being rejected. Therefore, it is important to balance the availability of new technology with the appetite of consumers to accept it.”

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