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Would Towers benefit from Self-Service machines?

Would the park benefit from self service machines?

  • Yes

    Votes: 29 80.6%

  • No

    Votes: 7 19.4%
  • Total voters
    36
2lcwefn.jpg

It seems as though self service on ride photo kiosks are coming to Thorpe...
 
Good idea quite frankly, though that vinyl wall is naff...

Plus not really cost cutting, as they still clearly require staff to actually do the photos...
 
I wonder if it is to try and get the' look at that line for photos, i'm not going to bother' people. As that would be added custom without added staff.

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The ones at the eye were crap and didn't take vouchers, so everyone was getting sent to the queues for the manned desks anyway.

One of my problems which such machines is that it's not clear what they do. (I had the same issue with box office Vs Guest services at Alton towers). If you are going to split queues to the same desk/machine then they should make it perfectly clear (a sign, with a menu style) which queue is for what.

I.e all people with vouchers still need to be in the manned queue.
 
Self service order points and checkouts have NEVER been about making service "faster" as many have alluded to. This was an early marketing ploy, mainly from supermarkets, when they introduced them in the first place.

Back then, going to a manned checkout was customary practice and has been since the beginning of time. So self service checkouts were marketed as the quiet tills in the corner that you could quickly scan your bottle of Coke and sandwich through and put some money in a slot, bypassing queues of large trolley shops.

They eventually became more and more popular and their usage increased to the point where they now handle the majority of basket shops in some stores and the introduction of "belted" units means they are getting used more for trolley shops as well.

If you look closely, virtually no company refers to them as "fast" anymore and haven't done in many years. But to hear many of you and many customers I encounter still refer to them and perceive them as such, proves that the way they were initially sold to society was clearly very successful.

In fact, it is almost always significantly SLOWER when processing a large basket or trolley transaction. The "fast" branding was in relation to the queue lengths vs regular checkouts and not the machines themselves where queuing for them now has become the norm.

Although the initial selling point was guff about "fast lanes" and now the official speil is about giving customers "payment choices", self service machines are and always will be about labour cost savings.
 
Matt.GC said:
Self service order points and checkouts have NEVER been about making service "faster" as many have alluded to. This was an early marketing ploy, mainly from supermarkets, when they introduced them in the first place.

Back then, going to a manned checkout was customary practice and has been since the beginning of time. So self service checkouts were marketed as the quiet tills in the corner that you could quickly scan your bottle of Coke and sandwich through and put some money in a slot, bypassing queues of large trolley shops.

They eventually became more and more popular and their usage increased to the point where they now handle the majority of basket shops in some stores and the introduction of "belted" units means they are getting used more for trolley shops as well.

If you look closely, virtually no company refers to them as "fast" anymore and haven't done in many years. But to hear many of you and many customers I encounter still refer to them and perceive them as such, proves that the way they were initially sold to society was clearly very successful.

In fact, it is almost always significantly SLOWER when processing a large basket or trolley transaction. The "fast" branding was in relation to the queue lengths vs regular checkouts and not the machines themselves where queuing for them now has become the norm.

Although the initial selling point was guff about "fast lanes" and now the official speil is about giving customers "payment choices", self service machines are and always will be about labour cost savings.
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It totally depends. Self service in shops is slower IMO and I never use them.

However when properly designed, self service can be quicker. Especially now with NFC technology, for buying tickets.
 
speedy said:
It totally depends. Self service in shops is slower IMO and I never use them.

However when properly designed, self service can be quicker. Especially now with NFC technology, for buying tickets.
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Train tickets come to mind, say someone booking a derby to at pancras ticket, it's just tap a button,tap pay then tap your phone.

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ihaveaspergers said:
Train tickets come to mind, say someone booking a derby to at pancras ticket, it's just tap a button,tap pay then tap your phone.

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No, it's not true. That is the perception. It's the lack of QUEUE that often makes it quicker, not the machine itself. If there was a ticket machine next to a manned ticket kiosk and neither had a queue, the person would be able to process the transaction much faster.

I don't see what NFC payments have to do with it, almost any chip and pin pad in existence now has NFC, it doesn't have to plugged in to a self service ticket machine?
 
Matt.GC said:
No, it's not true. That is the perception. It's the lack of QUEUE that often makes it quicker, not the machine itself. If there was a ticket machine next to a manned ticket kiosk and neither had a queue, the person would be able to process the transaction much faster.

I don't see what NFC payments have to do with it, almost any chip and pin pad in existence now has NFC, it doesn't have to plugged in to a self service ticket machine?
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I'm pretty sure at DBY at least it's quicker!

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I don't know about buying tickets, but collecting pre-booked tickets is much easier using the machine, you literally stick your card in, type a code and they come out.

Yes in some cases a human takes the same time or quicker than the machine. But usually there is more than one machine, and in many cases a ticket desk as well. In most cases, they can afford to have more machines than they can people. So if it weren't for the machine everyone would be queueing at the ticket desk.
 
speedy said:
I don't know about buying tickets, but collecting pre-booked tickets is much easier using the machine, you literally stick your card in, type a code and they come out.

Yes in some cases a human takes the same time or quicker than the machine. But usually there is more than one machine, and in many cases a ticket desk as well. In most cases, they can afford to have more machines than they can people. So if it weren't for the machine everyone would be queueing at the ticket desk.
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Yes that's exactly what they do. Machines are designed to remove as much labour cost as possible so it makes sense to have more of them available then people. This then creates a queue for the few manned kiosks which means the vast array of ticket machines are quicker as you don't queue for them.

So in answer to the original question posed, yes it probably is about time Towers introduced self service ticket machines as they clearly have no intention of forking out to man kiosks to cut queues.

But this perception that all self service machines are quicker is as a result of manufactured demand for them by cutting back on labour costs. In essence, companies create their own queues to force you to use their machines as its operational cheaper for them.
 
Matt.GC said:
Yes that's exactly what they do. Machines are designed to remove as much labour cost as possible so it makes sense to have more of them available then people. This then creates a queue for the few manned kiosks which means the vast array of ticket machines are quicker as you don't queue for them.

So in answer to the original question posed, yes it probably is about time Towers introduced self service ticket machines as they clearly have no intention of forking out to man kiosks to cut queues.

But this perception that all self service machines are quicker is as a result of manufactured demand for them by cutting back on labour costs. In essence, companies create their own queues to force you to use their machines as its operational cheaper for them.
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I think you misunderstood my point, self service machines are (in some cases) quicker because they can afford to have more machines than they would have people.

So for example in the photo above there are four self-service machines. How often do you see four staff members running the on-ride photos?

Plus they often have translations so work better for those that don't speak English.
 
Even if a lot of it is only seasonal, Towers is one of the main employers in an otherwise quite rural area and imo have a duty to continue to be. Never mind that trained staff are better than a computer screen or untrained guest at many service jobs. But that's not how things go so I'd rather self service than no service and it seems a choice between the two with Merlin.
 
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