What Is a Kiosk? Types, Uses and Kiosk Customer Surveys

You have almost certainly used a kiosk this month: the ordering screen at a fast-food restaurant, the check-in machine at the airport, the ticket machine at the station or the "How was your visit?" screen at a store exit. This guide explains what a kiosk is, the main types, where they are used, how they work, and how to use one to collect customer feedback.

What Is a Kiosk?

A kiosk is a stand-alone terminal that people use by themselves to get information or complete a transaction. A modern kiosk combines hardware (a touchscreen, an enclosure, often a card reader, printer or scanner) with software that runs a single application.

The word has a long history. English borrowed it from the French kiosque, which came from the Turkish köşk, a garden pavilion. Over time the word moved from small open pavilions to newsstands and booths, and today it mostly means a self-service screen.

Types of Kiosks

Where Kiosks Are Used

• Restaurants: Ordering kiosks take orders and payment, so staff can focus on preparing food.
• Retail: Information and endless-aisle kiosks let customers find products that are not on the shelf.
• Travel: Airports, stations and hotels use kiosks for check-in, tickets and keys.
• Healthcare: Patients check in, update details and get a queue number.
• Public services: Bill payment and document kiosks extend opening hours.
• Customer experience: Feedback kiosks ask visitors how their experience was before they leave.

How Does a Kiosk Work?

A kiosk has four parts:

1. Hardware: A touchscreen, a sturdy enclosure, and depending on the use a card reader, receipt printer, barcode or QR scanner, camera or speaker. Many businesses now use a tablet in a secure stand.
2. Kiosk software and kiosk mode: The device is locked to a single application in full screen. Users cannot leave the app, open other programs or change settings.
3. Connectivity: The kiosk connects to the business's systems (orders, payments, bookings or surveys) over the internet.
4. Remote management: Content, prices and questions are updated centrally, and the device reports if it goes offline.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Kiosks

Advantages

• Shorter queues and faster service at busy times
• The same team serves more customers
• Consistent information and fewer order errors
• Available outside staffed hours
• Data captured at the moment of the experience

Disadvantages

• Hardware, installation and maintenance costs
• Some customers, especially older people, may prefer talking to a person
• Accessibility needs careful design: screen height, contrast, text size
• Touchscreens need regular cleaning
• A broken kiosk frustrates customers more than having no kiosk

Kiosk Surveys: Collecting Customer Feedback on a Kiosk

A feedback kiosk asks a short question at the exact moment the experience ends: at a store exit, after a meal, at hotel check-out or after a hospital visit. The memory is fresh and answering takes a few seconds, which makes kiosks good at collecting a high volume of in-the-moment ratings.

How to design a good kiosk survey

• Keep it to one to three questions. People answer standing up and on the way out.
• Start with a rating. A smiley scale, a 1–5 satisfaction question (CSAT) or a 0–10 recommendation question (NPS).
• Add one open question. "What is the main reason for your rating?" The open answers tell you why; the rating only tells you how much.
• Use large buttons and short text. Readable from a step away, usable with one hand.
• Place it where the experience ends. At the exit, the checkout or the service desk, not at the entrance.
• Reset after every answer. The next person should start with a clean screen.
• Look at the comments every week. A kiosk collects many answers quickly; without analysis they pile up.

Kiosk, QR code or message: which channel?

Most teams combine them: a kiosk or tablet at the exit for volume, and a QR code or message for longer comments and for customers who were in a hurry.

Kiosk Surveys with Sonic Survey

Sonic Survey is Pivony's survey tool, with a free plan. It has a kiosk mode for a tablet at a store exit, a counter or a service desk:

• Turn it on: In the survey builder, go to Distribute → Link & QR Code and switch on Kiosk mode. You get a separate kiosk link to copy. Switching it off stops that link.
• Lock the tablet: Open the kiosk link on the tablet and lock the device to that page with Guided Access on iPad or screen pinning on Android.
• Ready for the next person: After each answer, the thank-you screen shows for 5 seconds and the survey starts over from the first question. Every person is a separate response.
• Unfinished answers are cleared: If someone walks away mid-survey, the survey starts over after 60 seconds without a touch.
• Made for touch: Kiosk mode uses bigger touch targets and skips the "I'm not a robot" check.
• Kiosk answers stay separate: Responses from the kiosk are labelled "Kiosk" in the responses list, the response detail and the export.

The same survey can also run through a QR code at the counter, on the receipt or on the table, and through the website widget, added with one line of code.

Customers can type or speak their answers, and every answer is analysed as text: sentiment, themes and the root causes behind the ratings appear in one place. So you see not just that satisfaction dropped at one location, but why.

Getting Started

Pick one location and one moment, for example the store exit or the end of a service visit. Ask one rating question and one open question, collect answers for two weeks, then read what the low ratings have in common. To see quickly which words come up most, paste the comments into our free word cloud generator; to find the causes behind them, request a free root cause analysis of your own data.

Related: How to Create a Survey · What Is CSAT? · What Is NPS? · How to Collect Customer Feedback