By Anton Jovanovic (CEO) Neo Self Service Solutions
Regulation and compliance are a challenge for businesses across all sectors. From financial services to wagering and healthcare, companies face mounting pressure to meet regulatory standards while continuing to drive growth and customer satisfaction. For many, compliance is seen as a cost centre, a necessary burden that drains resources and time.
Progressive businesses challenge that narrative. By leveraging automation – specifically through self-service technologies – companies are transforming compliance into an asset that reduces operational costs and enhances customer experience. It’s a shift that frees staff to focus on higher-value interactions, turning compliance from a back-office function into a gateway for better customer engagement.
Automating Compliance: A Business Imperative
Compliance is a major part of business strategy, but the manual processes that underpin it are often costly and inefficient. Recent reports indicate that companies are spending as much as 5% of their annual revenue on compliance-related activities, according to Thomson Reuters’ Cost of Compliance Report. The pressure to manage these growing costs, while remaining competitive, is leading companies to embrace automation.
Self-service kiosks and other automated technologies have emerged as key tools in this shift. By automating routine compliance tasks – such as identity verification, transaction monitoring, and age checks – businesses can ensure accuracy and streamline operations. For instance, kiosks have revolutionised compliance by enabling customers to verify identities and manage accounts without staff intervention, reducing the risk of human error whilst ensures full regulatory adherence.
The Customer Experience Advantage
Automation doesn’t just solve compliance challenges – it enhances customer experience. Traditionally, employees spent time performing transactional, compliance-heavy tasks, which detracted from their ability to engage with customers on more meaningful levels. By automating these processes, businesses can redeploy their teams to offer personalised customer service, building stronger relationships. It’s a win-win: compliance is handled in the background, while staff focus on delivering high-impact customer service.
A Forrester Research report supports this shift, noting that 72% of consumers now prefer self-service options over interacting with staff for routine transactions. By integrating compliance tasks into automated systems, businesses can deliver a faster, smoother customer journey that boosts satisfaction and loyalty.
From Cost Centre to Competitive Advantage
In industries facing strict regulatory requirements, automating compliance also helps reduce operational costs. Deloitte found that businesses which effectively leverage automation in compliance can reduce costs by up to 30%, while improving regulatory accuracy. By cutting the time and resources spent on manual compliance, companies save money and ensure scalability as they grow.
This is particularly relevant in the context of Retail 4.0—the integration of digital and physical spaces to create seamless, omnichannel experiences. Self-service kiosks, already in use for regulatory functions like age verification in retail and hospitality, are helping businesses manage compliance while delivering a better customer experience.
NEO: Automating Compliance for a Better Future
At NEO, we’ve worked closely with regulated industries to help automate compliance functions through our self-service kiosks. By partnering with our clients, we ensure that regulatory challenges don’t stifle business growth but instead become opportunities to enhance customer interaction. Our kiosks are designed to meet compliance requirements and to empower staff to focus on higher-value tasks.
As compliance becomes more complex, the need for automation will only grow. Businesses that embrace this shift can transform what was once a burden into a strategic advantage—reducing costs, improving accuracy, and ultimately delivering a superior customer experience.
Conclusion: Compliance as a Competitive Edge
Compliance is a growing challenge, businesses that use automation can turn it into a strategic advantage. Self-service technologies like kiosks can handle regulatory tasks, allowing companies to reduce costs, free up staff, and enhance customer satisfaction. NEO can help your business shift compliance from a cost centre into a source of competitive strength.
