Internet based pay phones

As I traveled home from a ski trip to Whistler BC Canada the other day, I took note of the self service technology used in the airports. Airports are the largest consumer of kiosks, digital signage and vending that I've come across. Some more than others, obviously. I noticed in the Cincinnati airport, the same kiosks and digital signage exists that I've discussed previously, and they are still not 100% functional. But they've taken the time to add another item (before fixing the previous) and that is an Internet enabled payphone.



It was a nice hardware form factor, and the interface was okay, but really the design of it was from 10 years ago. The unit is produced by a company called Super Pay Phone. As I walked up to it, I noticed it had a Windows message onscreen (a big no no). It had evidently recently applied an automatic Windows update and was waiting on if the PC wanted a reboot. I touched the "reboot" button and the unit shut down and went through it's start up process. There are many reasons why this is bad including allowing hackers to see your OS (to know how to penetrate it), and during the start up they system gives all kinds of other pertinent information to the hacker, including the option to get into the BIOS (should be password protected with a unique password). This unit is obviously not completely PCI compliant. All of this could be fixed simply by changing the auto windows update method to only update late at night (3am) and automatically reboot. Or, not apply updates at all, and allow a network administrator to apply updates.



Years ago we priced similar units for Cincinnati Bell who was thinking of replacing all of their traditional payphones with Internet enabled devices. At the time, they just couldn't justify replacing a $300-$600 dollar device with a $3500 device (times thousands). Now, you can hardly find any payphones on the street, and only occasionally inside. But the smaller start ups such as Smart Pay Phones may take away the Bell presence in this marketplace, and quickly. It will be interesting to see the rate of adoption of these smart devices that provide greater service than a traditional pay phone. A small company trying to grow a market and network can pay for the devices with advertising and keeping costs low (compared to Bell's often expensive overhead) with leasing of hardware, and internet access.

I think the hardware is pretty nice, but a few tweaks to interface and security would make this much better. I'd love to know what kind of usage it gets, I doubt it is much. Those few travelers who don't have a cell phone or those who are interested in the "gadget" aspect of the phone will enjoy it, but I frankly would not be likely to use it. What about you? Would you use a device such as this when travelling? How about around your home town? Leave a comment below.

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.