Disappointing Kiosks

You've probably seen a kiosk that has an error message on screen or even a kiosk that has a blank screen. A non functioning kiosk is worse than no kiosk at all. It undermines the consumer's trust in a reliable source of content or their trust in the capabilities of the provider. Sure, we all pretty much understand that computers are not perfect and will need some maintenance from time to time, and that not every company has world class IT support teams. But you can implement systems that will alert your team when something goes awry, or reboots itself in attempts to clear the problem. Sadly, many companies that implement kiosks don't want to consider these possibilities, or they are the first thing in the budget that gets "nixed" when trying to make the numbers work. Ongoing maintenance and support are important considerations. Onsite warranty from hardware manufacturers combined with good software infrastructure and a plan... are the basics of maximizing uptime.



But one thing that is perhaps even worse than a non functioning kiosk is a kiosk that is well designed, has good signage, has a good purpose, and then fails to deliver on it's promise. I recently saw an example of this at the Cincinnati Airport (CVG). As you enter the baggage claim area there are two large stations of three kiosks each, that promise the visitor hotel information and courtesy phones. When you approach the screen, you see three links: Hotel Courtesy Phone, Visitor Information and Kiosk / Airport advertising information. Obviously, this was put together by whomever has a lock on airport advertising, otherwise why would you give that last topic such importance for a visitor kiosk? When you click on Hotel Courtesy Phone you get a page with a bunch of logos of local hotels and basic information on them. If you click a button, it promises to call that hotel for you so you can book a room. The phone dialing did not work.



So I tried the Visitor information in hopes of finding out what to do around town, where to eat, shop, and perhaps some quick local history. Nope, the page loaded with a simple but terrible message: "Content coming soon". I can tell you that these kiosks had already been deployed for months, and still there was no content. I was disappointed. Not happy, not delighted, not impressed, I was let down by the content provider, not the hardware or operating system. It was simply a lazy provider of content that did not live up to their promise to the consumer.


I wanted to voice my dis-satisfaction so I clicked the third link to learn about airport advertising and find the company responsible for the content. But guess what, I found the same "Content coming soon" message on this screen. So even if I wanted to add my hotel to the list, or find out how to help this sad excuse for a content provider... I could not. I had to shake my head and let out a slight chuckle that can only come from someone in the business. I should sit nearby and see how many other visitors come away from the kiosks with a positive experience. I'm sure I'd be sitting for many hours. Turns out the kiosks are provided by cvg-ads.com, which I looked up on my Blackberry browser. The site was empty too. Ugh. However, I just checked it again and it forwards to coreyairportservices.net which is also light in actual content, and overly complex in design of the flash tool to show available ads. They will show rate cards for some items, but not the kiosks. They do digital signage and promotions within the CVG airport. It appears that this is their first airport market.





The kiosk hardware is nice enough, these are Slabb brand kiosk enclosures, with touch screen and phone handsets. I even liked how the power cords were nicely covered where they run into the wall and plugged into a power source in a room behind the wall. Nicely done! So I can find no fault in the hardware installation, no fault in the operating system and the screen design was even decent. But the most basic element, the content was limited or missing. The opportunity was there, and they missed it. How many people tried to get some value from these kiosks during their first months of deployment and were also disappointed? Those visitors will likely never walk up to those kiosks again. You get one chance to make a first impression and you had better not mess it up. A returning guest at your kiosk will cut you a break when you have a temporary hardware / software failure, but that's because they already like the product you deliver which is "the content". A first time guest will not give you any slack and will not likely return.