When shoppers nearly always have an alternative, curating the perfect customer experience requires a comprehensive effort. Companies work on their branding and the ideal layout for a retail store, but they must also pay attention to every customer touchpoint. Kiosks have risen in prominence as a way for retail businesses to decrease buying time and simplify the experience for customers, but they create a number of challenges to overcome. With an attention to the function of observability in the monitoring of kiosk systems, retailers can ensure that their equipment continues to perform as needed.
Challenges of Monitoring Kiosk Fleets
Although the customer perceives one interaction with a business during each transaction, businesses may see many from their perspective. A retail organization with multiple kiosks and custom merchandiser displays has multiple opportunities to improve customer experience, but also many chances to fail. Customers are less likely to attempt a purchase or other transaction when one kiosk does not perform as intended, which can affect long-term customer retention. Companies must track the condition, performance and maintenance needs of each kiosk, creating additional complexity when the equipment varies in type, hardware and software needs.
Observability Strategies
Comprehensive Logging
Data is at the center of observability in retail, as it guides the decisions that developers and retailers make. To get those crucial data points, any tracking system should provide comprehensive logging. Although the logging of adverse events may have most use in a DevOps context, all data can provide information that is important for improving the function of the kiosks. For example, developers can compare the average time to complete a transaction at individual kiosks with identical equipment and maintenance needs. This data can help to identify possible weaknesses, such as lagging software or failing components.
Metrics Collection
In order to determine the best performance of a system, developers must create a number of metrics to follow for each kiosk. Although details about successful transactions may provide an ideal start, best practices include metrics that follow the customer throughout their time at the kiosk. Time spent on each step, or the number of abandoned transactions at a particular kiosk, can provide insight into the customer experience that can drive effective improvements. These metrics should be quantifiable and easy to distinguish between kiosks to avoid confounding or averaging data.
Centralized Monitoring
Although any kiosk may provide an administrator with data about the individual equipment, centralization is key. In times of efficiency, where businesses may operate multiple retail establishments with just a few developers, the DevOps team must be able to identify problems immediately from a remote location. Centralized monitoring allows the team to see how each kiosk operates, with notifications of system failures, timeouts, or other performance issues. Cloud-based systems make it easy for these teams to see critical data at a glance from any location, limiting the amount of time they must spend traveling to individual retail stores.
Distributed Tracing
Even the best monitoring system may fall flat if it fails to follow each transaction from beginning to end. Modern retail establishments may use a variety of systems to move a transaction through the process, calling for distributed tracing to connect the dots. Distributed tracing identifies unique transactions as they flow across multiple microservices or APIs. A system that incorporates this tracing into the overall monitoring can help to locate bottlenecks or unexpected dependencies in real-time.
Proactive Maintenance and Updates
A central benefit of monitoring for kiosks is the ability to track device inventory and provide preventative maintenance. A retail store that has several kiosks at multiple locations may have unique maintenance and upgrade needs for each one, depending on its type, condition, age and overall use. A centralized system for monitoring simplifies the maintenance schedule, so that technical and equipment maintenance teams can target their efforts in an efficient way. Preventive maintenance can keep software security updates on target and reduce downtime for each piece of equipment.
Although the rising popularity of kiosks helps customers to feel like they can manage a transaction without assistance, the work does not happen without observability. Prioritizing observability in retail kiosks allows businesses to provide critical monitoring, bug detection and metric collection for each kiosk. This investment can lead to long-term improvements in equipment function, as well as a better customer experience.