Sometimes going for major cool, major smart, and major disruption, leaves you missing the obvious.
Submitted for your consideration: Zoom Systems. They make a pretty sophisticated high tech Kiosk called the Zoom Shop.
There is a Kiosk at the hotel where I am staying. Early in the morning, just prior to my daily 20 ft run, I wandered over to take a look at the Kiosk as it is the gift shop for the hotel. The nice Hilton Garden employee said “Sorry, it’s busted. We’ve called em a couple of times, they’re pretty slow at responding, happens a bunch.”
Ouch number one. Random employee, of another company, completely out of your control, just trashes your reliability and customer service in a hotel packed with business people. Yep, but there is more.
As I wandered over anyway, I was think, uh oh another BOD (Blue Screen of Death) picture in the making. These are those famous photos of Windows crashing on signs, movie marquees, etc, etc. Ah, no.
Yes, that would be a non-windows crashed machine.
The point here isn’t one crash for the Penguin, naah, happens to the best of us.
There are two points.
First, a truckload of money was spent on this product. Millions went into this according to the web site. Clearly, somebody didn’t save a bit of coin for a customer service response team that is totally focussed on making sure random employees of other companies aren’t given material to trash Zoom Systems.
The second is the engineering here seems a bit weird. I can think of all the obvious remote management, firmware reboot, etc, etc, things that should be in this system which would prevent this from ever happening. In my simple brain, having a firmware/embedded fail safe that brings the curtain down gracefully (we are updating, please come back) or anything to prevent the customer from seeing this screen, would be a priority. Dialing home instantly, etc, etc, all seem to be logical things for this box to do.
And it all might be there.
It all might work most of the time, but none of it mattered because for the better part of 9 hours (I asked) the machine was dead and the Hilton Garden employees were pointing out how bad it and the company’s service was. Guests would come up to the lobby and employees would trash the machine and the company.
Lesson for your start up? Besides the obvious engineering points (build for the failure scenarios), remember, no sear into your brain, the importance of customer service and what happens when others, you can’t fire/train/control, are talking about your products and services.
As a compulsive pedant, I must comment on your crash screenshot:
* It's the application that crashed, not the OS; the OS (and web server) are alive and well, serving up 500 codes.
* Some people do run java apps on Windows. Or Solaris, for that matter. :)
Posted by: Jonathan Ellis | February 19, 2006 at 15:50
Do you think it was VC funded? If so, who is the sucker - uh, investor - that managed to sink good investor money into a company that are lacking even modest business skills? Let me know who they are - I have a BUNCH of ideas that I have no clue on how to implement properly! Nice blog, by the way.
Posted by: Tom Kirkham | February 19, 2006 at 21:15
Oops sorry. Yes, they were/are VC funded. Probably burnt throught their money jetting around the world to sign up "partners" and forgot to write checks to the ones that design the stuff and keep it running.
Posted by: Tom Kirkham | February 19, 2006 at 21:19
Jonathan beat me to it. The web server failed to serve up a page, but the OS is running merrily along. And who knows what OS it is. It could also be a broken net connection.
Posted by: Larry Borsato | February 19, 2006 at 21:48
You need to stay at Hilton Garden Inns' competitor --Courtyard Marriott (where I was staying when I first read this). Very low tech and touchy-feely. They have built an oversized walk-in cupboard beside their registration desks called "The Market". Includes shelves of dry goods inventory and a fridge for the drinks. You walk in, pick out your choice of goods and you to go to the 24/7-attended registration desk next door and pay up. Let's see: (i) CY management has total control over the operation with no third party to blame; (ii) they get to talk more often to their guests and find out what's on their mind; (iii) only the fridge can break down and (iv) they demonstrate a trust in their guests to pay up. Somehow more human overall!
Posted by: Jim Courtney | February 21, 2006 at 23:53
Woops, forgot to include (v) no VC funding and little capital investment required...
Posted by: Jim Courtney | February 22, 2006 at 00:05
I agree Jim -- competent humans trump machinery any day! I hate getting frustrated at a poorly implemented machine when a human could do it sufficiently well, while doing other tasks (like attending to the front desk). I am a frequent guest at Marriott hotels (and Hilton-chain) and the Marriott has always beaten the Hilton regarding human comfort. However, the Hampton Inn that I frequent does have the same cupboard type thing, and a couple other Garden Inns do the same cupboard type thing with the separate attendant.
Definitely not unique to Marriott. Now if only my client would up the hotel expenditure so I could stay at a Residence Inn...
-J
Posted by: J. Shirley | February 24, 2006 at 17:40