Self-service kiosks have become a familiar part of our day-to-day lives in no time at all. From scanning our own groceries through self-checkout to placing an order in our favourite fast food restaurant, there are certain things many of us don’t even think twice about ‘doing for ourselves’.

It’s often said that kiosks can help to boost customer engagement simply by putting people in charge. But what if they could make the whole customer experience more entertaining and enjoyable, too?

Well, kiosks are nothing if not versatile. Building on the captivating power screens have on us, and the seemingly infinite possibilities of digital technology, it turns out yet another of the things kiosks are great at is putting the ‘fun’ back into functionality.

Here are a few ideas for how to grab a piece of that for your business.

Games and Entertainment

Digital signage used for advertising is already a red-hot market worth $6.5bn in the US alone and forecast to grow by more than 7.5% year-on-year for the next decade. But with kiosks, you can go one better than simply broadcasting marketing content. You can make it interactive.

Touchscreen kiosks are perfect for playing games on. No one likes waiting, but in some situations it’s unavoidable. Whether it’s waiting for an appointment or to drop off luggage for a flight or for a meal to be served, adding the kind of video games popular among mobile users to check-in or on-table kiosks gives people something to do while they wait and ease the boredom.

Similarly, you can create bespoke solutions to ‘gamify’ parts of the customer experience to make it more engaging and fun. A simple example might be to ask customers to rate their experience that day, but do so by creating a short video clip. That could then be posted to social media, with spot prizes for the best submissions. Simple but effective in any setting!

Thinking along similar lines, you could also use kiosks as photo booths for customers to create souvenirs to take away with them. This is ideal in leisure and entertainment venues, and capitalizes on the fact that kiosks can be put to several different uses at once. If you have ticketing kiosks, for example, all it takes is adding a camera and a photo printer. Think of the money you’d save versus buying in a purpose-built booth!

Kiosks are also tailor-made for introducing immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR), and more specifically augmented reality (AR). There’s a ‘gamified’ element to this, with AR a fun way to present digital content and make it interactive.

But AR is also capable of adding new depth to customer experiences. A classic example is the use of AR in fashion retail to let customers ‘virtually’ try on outfits without having to change. A lot of fashion retailers might wonder whether having kiosks as a point-of-sale solution alone is worth their while. But the ability to add something extra to the customer experience makes it more than just a POS decision, and more about adding value and increasing satisfaction.

Most business owners would agree that that is something worth investing in.