Delivering the Customer interface through technology

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Box Technologies' established view of the global post office network is that it makes no distinction between it and any other retail outlet.

Box Technologies has a long history in the retail sector and sees Post Offices simply as retailers – just with a different set of products and services from most shops. Banks also fall in to the same category, albeit with increased challenges in areas like security. Box Technologies core business is the customer interface, as chairman Russell Willcox explains:

"It's like the old IT-speak of human-machine interface. A customer who goes into a bank might walk up to a kiosk and insert a credit card. As far as we are concerned that's a customer-interface device. It might ask for a pin number, and that's another customer interface device. It might ask you to touch the screen, insert coins or notes, scan a barcode and so on. These are our technologies – input/output devices that enable people to get whatever it is they want from a transaction or interaction into a businesses system."

This is the essence of what Box Technologies provides to the market place; it supplies organisations such as Post Office networks with leading edge customised technologies. One example that it has recently developed is what it calls the three-station printer.

Willcox continues: "It is stamp printer that is built into a receipt printer. So it can actually do things like print TV licences and give you a receipt for the transaction, and produce stamps for mailing as well. We put all this into one very small footprint printer for one particular customer."

Devices that can be used in the post office itself include such things as tablet computers these enable users to sit down with a customer and use the device for data collection and displaying information, such as when discussing a mortgage or financial products that can be bought through the post office network. It is all about technology doing the work whilst people provide the personal service.

The second area of Box Technologies' expertise in this area is self-service, which includes kiosks, interactive services and digital signage. Finally there is the point of sale and the technology supporting that. This includes the three-station printer, as well as touch screens, bar code and OSR readers, pin pads and Chip and pin devices and a variety of purpose-built retail PC systems.

One of Willcox's minor irritations is that many post offices tend to only see themselves as purveyors of various postal and government services and a few products. "They don't see themselves as retailers, which is what they have the ability to be" he says. "A National Post Office network normally has more branches than any other Retail entity, therefore the opportunity to offer a wide range of additional products and services exists to be exploited". It is by offering a broad range of services, like any other retail outlet, that post offices will secure their place at the heart of the community moving forward.

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