Global Entry Kiosk Program Kicks Off at SJC

International travelers can now theoretically breeze through lines at San Jose International Airport through two new “global entry kiosks” if they pass some rigorous background checks.

Source: www.nbcbayarea.com

Nice video story by local San Jose news station showing new Global Entry kiosks

Burger Robot Poised to Disrupt Fast Food Industry

I saw the future of work in a San Francisco garage two years ago. Or rather, I was in proximity to the future of work, but happened to be looking

Source: singularityhub.com

360 burgers an hour, and with labor cost savings the ingredients can be upgraded. Decreased liability in food prep. Has and will it result in massive unemployment. Nope. It actually creates jobs.

Papa John’s International Inc.: Point-of-sale system upgrades challenge second-quarter results

Expenses related to the systemwide rollout of a new point-of-sale system and commodity prices, particularly for cheese, negatively affected Papa John

Source: nrn.com

The company’s bottom line was affected by $868,000 in expenses related to the rollout of the chain’s proprietary FOCUS point-of-sale system. As of June 29, the POS system was in place in 383 restaurants, 369 of which are company-owned. Papa John’s said in its earnings report that it expected the majority of installations to be completed by the end of 2014.


The system, which requires new hardware, includes a driver dispatch system that uses GPS technology that enables drivers to determine optimal delivery routes. It also has a labor management system “that really takes us to the next level,” and that he expected would drive efficiency.

Designing A Customer Service Experience For Millennials: Is Too Much Choice Just Right?

Crafting a customer experience that works for today’s changing customer base–including millennials–is no easy task. Key decisions  to be made include self-service vs. human-delivered customer service. And, as much as anything else, decisions about how much choice to offer your customers. By and large, offering more choices is something that will be […]

Source: www.forbes.com

Forbes contributor on how self-service can rob certain customers of desired interaction with people during a lunch break. I remember the cafeterias where you took the tray and self-selected the dishes. 

Boiling Springs Subway gets high-tech drive-thru

Customers breezed through the drive-thru at the new Subway restaurant in Boiling Springs on Thursday.

Source: www.goupstate.com

Outdoor touchscreen ordering at Subway with terminals that move up and down to accommodate drivers.  Nextep out of Troy Michigan with the software and terminals.

City of Philadelphia, mental health orgs to pilot screening tabletkiosk in grocery store | mobihealthnews

The kiosk offers users a tablet on which they answer survey questions about their mental state, but it doesn’t take biometric readings.

Source: mobihealthnews.com

Users also have the option to enter in demographic information before they take the screening. Demographics include age, gender, partnership status, race, ethnicity group, and whether or not they’ve had behavioral health treatment in the past. When users are finished with the survey, the kiosk provides them with resources to seek additional help, including 24-hour hotlines, like a suicide prevention line, peer support lines, family support lines, in addition to a link to a website that has all the behavioral health treatment providers in the city.

Kiosks Introduce a New Level of Simplicity and Convenience Into Orlando-Area Attraction Ticketing | Livewire Digital

Ticket Box in Kissimmee, Florida called on Livewire Digital of York, Pennsylvania, to bring in new technology to revolutionize ticketing for tourists. Ticket Box wanted an exciting and efficient solution for tourists to purchase tickets to the area’s top attractions, all in one place without long lines, hassle, or confusion.

Source: livewiredigital.com

Tourists visit a Ticket Box to browse through the area’s world-renowned attractions and value-priced ticket options. After selecting the attractions they wish to visit, Ticket Box prints and dispenses their tickets, instantly. For attractions requiring wristbands or other forms of entry, a voucher will be printed that can be exchanged for an entry pass at the attraction’s Will Call. In addition to saving time and avoiding the stress of high-pressure sales situations, Ticket Box allows tourists to discover new attractions and activities to enhance their vacations.

PCSO welcomes kiosk system –

EATON — A dual-kiosk vending machine has been booked into the Preble County Jail this summer for inmates to use to request and receive com…

Source: www.registerherald.com

Inmates are able to access the kiosk, to order items from the commissary, twice a day, according to Renner. A touch screen placed on a cart, is wheeled into cells for inmates to manually order items themselves. This allows inmates to have responsibility of their own orders, whereas, if an item was not filled for an inmate previously, the blame could have been on the inmate who had potentially forgotten to place the order, or it could have been the fault of a Sheriff’s Deputy who forgot to fill the order. With the kiosk, the responsibility of placing and filling orders falls entirely on the users.

Optimizing Retail Solutions | Kiosk Industry

In the current mobile marketplace, desktop sites, apps, in store signage, and mobile sites combine to create a consumer experience that may or may not be consistent across all mediums.  In April’s STORES Magazine,  Peter Johnson writes about how MandM e-retailer identifies this issue and works to resolve it.  

Source: kioskindustry.org

Also in the April edition of STORES is an article by Karen M. Kroll about mid sized retailers and their ability to view inventory across channels including e-commerce, brick and mortar, catalog and mobile sales.  Making this full inventory available to store visitors is one way to optimize the use of this solution.  Visitors should have access to kiosks that display the store’s website and online inventory.  In this particular case, the technology that enables live inventory tracking is a Celerant solution.

Denver Area’s First Bitcoin ATM and Educational Kiosk Is Now Open – Hidden Bitcoin Promotion Begins Wednesday, July 30, Two Bitcoin Up For Grabs

>PRWEB.COM Newswire

Source: www.digitaljournal.com

The company says their kiosk attendants are ready to help throughout the transaction process. That includes clearing up common misconceptions surrounding bitcoin, and explaining security risks; even sending a micro transaction to a new user’s wallet demonstrating the ease and speed of transactions on the bitcoin network. Also, according to Berger, “the opportunity to gain direct feedback from new or potential users will be invaluable to refining our education efforts. We hope to share that insight with other companies in the bitcoin space building user-centric platforms.”

Fujitsu Partners with OnCue Technologies to Deliver In-Aisle Point-of-Information Systems – WSJ.com

Fujitsu, a leading information communication technology (ICT) company, today announced an International Distribution and License Agreement with OnCue Technologies, a developer of in-aisle point-of-information solutions that are designed to enhance the consumer shopping experience.

Source: online.wsj.com

Fujitsu will resell OnCue Technologies’ InfoCue and Expert OnCue mini kiosk solutions to big-box, grocery, beverage and hardware retailers in the United States.

OnCue Technologies’ cloud-based, customizable mini kiosks benefit retailers by enabling them to deliver expert advice and product information to customers in the aisle without requiring employee training. The responsive touch screen kiosks feature capabilities, including complete SKU data, audio and video multi-media responses to shopper requests, barcode scanning, and shopping list and coupon printing. The solutions empower consumers with immediate information needed to make a purchase decision.

The philosophy of great customer service | Derek Sivers

CD Baby had lots of powerful well-funded competitors, but after a few years they were all but gone, and they dominated that niche of selling independent music. 150,000 musicians, 2 million music-buying customers, $139 million in revenue, $83 million paid directly to musicians.  How did they do it?

Source: sivers.org

Client Care  (not Customer Service). Be available, be generous.  What would do if Paul McCartney called in? Every one is Paul McCartney.

Life insurers set up kiosks to target middle-class, but people of Wal-Mart aren’t biting

MetLife and other life insurers are trying to reverse a long slide in sales of life insurance to the middle class, but it’s proving a tough sell.

Source: online.wsj.com

Another reason for the sales decline: MetLife, Prudential and other insurers that went public in the 1990s and early 2000s got more fixated on the bottom line. As a result, insurers shrank their ranks of in-house agents to save on recruitment, training and other costs. They farmed out sales to securities brokers and independent financial advisers, who also tend to have well-to-do clients.

The Future For Self-Service in Self-Storage

Future for Self-Service in Self-Storage

Nice blog by Jay McDonald on self-service in self-storage which highlights new whitepaper in the industry.  OT2014WhitePaper

Key findings from the white paper include:

  • Self-service sales and move-ins have jumped more than 500 percent in the past three years.
  • Customers value the convenience of being able to rent storage units on their own schedule.
  • Kiosk use was evenly split between office hours and non-office hours.
  • Three in four tenants who rented off-hours chose to complete the rental process at the kiosk.
  • Kiosks provide efficiencies by taking over routine tasks such as payment processing and lease application checks, freeing managers to address more detailed or specialized duties.

There are some great metrics in here and hands down it’s the best writeup in a long time.

And surprisingly we have an appearance by Francie Mendelsohn in a bit of the naysayer role.

Francie Mendelsohn

Francie Mendelsohn

But Francie Mendelsohn said that’s only half the story.
Mendelsohn is president of Summit Research Associates, a Rockville, MD-based consulting firm that helps companies assess the need for kiosks. She points out that while about 1.2 million self-service kiosks are operating in North America, they’re far from inevitable for all industries.

For example, they’ve failed to find traction in the fast-food business, despite attempts by McDonald’s, Subway and other brands to introduce them. Kiosks also have met an equally chilly reception in the high-touch world of hospitality.

Mendelsohn said traffic—or the lack thereof—may prove the biggest obstacle for kiosks in the self-storage industry.“Number of users per day, number of users per hour—that’s a pretty solid indicator,” she said. “If you hardly have any, you can’t really justify a kiosk.”

Mendelsohn also  worries that tablet technology could render kiosks obsolete overnight, in much the same way that Kodak’s kiosks took a hit when photography went digital.

“Things do change, sometimes much faster or in ways you just can’t predict,” she said.

The question is whether it makes more sense to automate this process using technology (whether larger kiosk, or tablet, or touch LCD, whatever).

The whitepaper makes a very strong case given the number of transactions both “checking in” and rentals.  Just like in a corrections or outdoors, a tablet is not the best platform, here in this unattended industry something a bit more rugged seems validated.

Recommended…Craig K.

 

Fitness kiosk a solution to age-old problem

Schriever aerobics class enthusiasts may feel like they are on the holodeck of the Starship Enterprise during the next few weeks.

Source: www.schriever.af.mil

“Users will walk up to a small kiosk that’s mounted on the wall near the entrance to the aerobics room,” said Seth Cannello, Schriever sports and fitness director. “Once they decide on the class they want to take, they’ll simply punch in the information and walk into the room. Seconds later, a nearly 100-inch screen will drop down from the ceiling and a projector mounted to the ceiling at the back of the room will display an instructor-led video.”

Zmartframe brings touch capabilities to old monitors

The Zmartframe is a touch-enabled frame that attaches to a monitor to bring touchscreen capabilities to a Windows PC or transform it into a standalone Andro…

Source: www.gizmag.com

This is inventive.  Take a regular LCD and convert it to touchscreen fairly easy.  Oh, and if it has HDMI port then there is also built in Android client in the touchscreen that you can use. Starts at $130 for 19 inch. 

2014 Chromebook Comparison Guide

Since the launch of the first consumer Chromebook back in 2011, Google’s platform has come a long way. From budget systems to the wallet-bashing Pixel, ther…

Source: www.gizmag.com

Eight different ChromeBook models covered. Very nice.