Introduction
The emerging business trends constantly modify and shape consumer behavior. Modern-day consumers are tech-savvy and require rapid services. To keep up with customer expectations and make the consumer experience flawless, the business world saw the dawn of digital kiosks. Whether you deploy them as information kiosks, digital signages or self-service booths, kiosks play a central role in every major industrial sector.
What might look like a simple solution to enhancing your customer experience can actually make your business encounter several roadblocks if not managed properly. In this article, we will highlight the major challenges that your business can face with Kiosk management and how an efficient Kiosk solution can help mitigate them.
5 Major Challenges in Kiosk Management
- Misuse of Unattended Public-Facing Kiosks
One of the main business benefits of deploying digital kiosks is reducing the manual burden on the employees. Digital kiosks can be configured and left unattended to serve diverse business functions such as digital signages in malls, interactive kiosks at banks, self-help kiosks at hotels, etc. Although digital kiosks help improve employee productivity, it also poses the risk of these devices being misused by the customers.
Digital kiosks do not have any on-site staff guarding the device at all times. Customers may knowingly or unknowingly change the device settings, browse untrusted websites or navigate through the device for entertainment purposes.
- Cyber Security Risks
IT admins would agree that every device that their company deploys requires constant security reinforcement to keep the device and the data stored on it safe. Businesses must continually ensure that their digital kiosks are in the best health to prevent exposing any entry points to hackers.
Ensuring that the kiosk device security and health are optimal throughout is a tedious task. IT admins need to look after timely OS and app updates, routine patch fixes, as well as configuring various security settings on multitudes of diversely located digital kiosks. The inability to keep the digital kiosks well-maintained and secured can lead to hackers infiltrating the devices leading to compromised enterprise security.
- Pushing Apps & Content on Kiosks
Managing the look and feel of the digital kiosks plays a crucial role in improving the customer appeal and experience. Businesses need to constantly push relevant content and apps on their digital kiosks instantly and over the air. Every kiosk needs to be customized and provisioned according to the purpose it serves. Whether you need to run a single website or display multiple videos on a loop, your digital kiosks need to be constantly updated with the latest resources. Because digital kiosks are installed at dispersed locations, IT admins are required to hustle from one location to another to upload newer content and provision each digital kiosk manually.
- Troubleshooting Kiosk Issues
Managing a plethora of digital kiosks is a complicated process, but making frequent sprints to various kiosk sites to troubleshoot the devices is even more tedious. What happens when one or more of the diversely installed digital kiosks run into an error? IT admins are required to constantly keep an eye on their digital kiosks and instantly resolve issues that may occur to prevent a degraded customer experience.
- Fragmented Kiosk Types & OS
Managing kiosk devices installed at diverse locations is a tedious task. Imagine having to manage different types of kiosk devices such as POS systems, digital signages and interactive kiosks of diverse OS types such as Android, iOS, Windows, etc. IT admins are challenged with the management diversity that each device type and OS present.
Overcoming Challenges: How Kiosk Software Helps
To make the most of their digital kiosks, businesses must find the right tool that helps them simplify their kiosk management. Kiosk software helps businesses achieve just that.
Let’s take a look at some of the capabilities that Kiosk Software offers businesses:
- Remote Management
One of the main functions that the Kiosk software enables businesses to achieve is remote management of their digital kiosks. Businesses deploy their kiosks at various sites making it difficult for their IT admins to constantly pay visits to the site for every minor or major change to be done on the kiosks. The Kiosk software offers a platform for the IT admins to remotely manage, provision and monitor their diversely located kiosks.
- Device Lockdown
Modern-day Kiosk Software allows businesses to turn their commercial devices into purpose-specific kiosks. You can lock your devices into pre-selected applications to tailor the device’s usage for your business needs. This helps businesses reduce their expenditure on purchasing costly special kiosk devices.
- Security Policies
Because corporate data security is every business’s prime concern, and because digital kiosks are generally unattended, it is crucial to have strict security configurations in place. The Kiosk software helps IT admins configure a plethora of security settings on their digital kiosks.
Device-level security settings include disabling the device peripherals and remotely locking the device. Data protection policies include data encryption, Passcode Policies and remotely wiping off the device’s data. Network security settings include configuring VPNs and firewalls and blocking untrusted websites. All these security policies help IT admins of businesses add layers of protection to their unattended digital kiosks.
- OTA App & Content Sharing
Since digital kiosks rely majorly on business-specific content and apps to display the right information and assist customers speedily, IT admins can push business resources on their kiosks remotely. The Kiosk Software allows over-the-air (OTA) distribution of apps and content from the dashboard to remotely provision multiple kiosks at once. Most Kiosk management software allows you to push public apps from Google PlayStore, Apple App Store or Windows Business Store. You can also share files, videos and presentations of diverse formats for your digital signage.
- Remote Support
IT admins need not manually hustle whenever a digital kiosk runs into an error. Kiosk software allows IT admins to remotely take charge of the devices and resolve device issues without spending time and effort on frequent site visits. Some modern-day Kiosk software and MDM solutions extend Remote Cast & Control capabilities with which IT admins can remotely mirror the device’s screen on their dashboard and virtually fix issues faster. This prevents businesses from losing customers due to extended downtime.
- Reports & Analytics
Managing unattended devices requires businesses to strengthen their monitoring capabilities and keep a constant track of their device usage and overall health. Kiosk software helps IT admins track their inventory-wide performance, usage and gain insights on the devices’ health with comprehensive device-level reports. Some Kiosk software also provide a detailed analytical summary which helps them identify potential issues and prevent them from taking place.
Scalefusion Kiosk Software: Simplifying Your Kiosk Device Management
Scalefusion is a device and endpoint management solution that offers businesses all of the above-mentioned Kiosk management features. Additionally, Scalefusion also helps IT admins take their kiosk device management a step ahead with the following capabilities:
- Centralized Dashboard
With Scalefusion Kiosk Software IT admins can execute extensive security and management configurations for their remotely located kiosks from a single unified dashboard. Whether you want to push additional security settings, or distribute apps and content on your kiosks or monitor the health and usage of all your kiosk devices, you can do it without investing in multiple tools or switching between various software. Scalefusion helps you manage, monitor and secure your digital kiosks with ease.
- Kiosk Management Modes
Scalefusion Kiosk Software not only helps you manage and secure your digital kiosks but also helps you turn off-the-shelf digital devices into dedicated kiosks. Following are the various Kiosk modes that Scalefusion offers for diverse business use-cases:
1. Single-app Kiosk Mode: Businesses can restrict their smartphones, tablets or other commercial digital devices to a single application to turn it into a dedicated kiosk. You can obtain instant self-service kiosks, digital signages, interactive or informative kiosks of various kinds with this capability.
2. Multi-app Kiosk Mode: You can also lock your digital devices into more than one application with Scalefusion’s multi-app kiosk mode. This not only helps in digital kiosk management but also helps IT admins restrict their employees’ devices to limited apps to prevent distractions and maximize productivity.
3. Kiosk Browser Lockdown: Kiosk browser lockdown is a type of single-app mode, in which you can restrict your devices to a single browser. Scalefusions lets IT admins allow or block specific websites on the selected browser for a secure browsing experience.
- Task Automation
IT admins can simplify their kiosk device management by leveraging extensive automation capabilities. Routine IT tasks such as OS and app updates, rebooting the kiosks, publishing apps on kiosk devices, locking and unlocking the devices, etc. are critical to maintaining the security of the kiosk devices. With the workflow software, IT admins can pre-schedule Workflows and automate these tasks to unburden themselves of the manual work while ensuring it is done efficiently at the same time.
- Support for Diverse OS Types
Scalefusion MDM offers a unified platform for IT admins to push policies and configurations on their Android, iOS and Windows digital kiosks. Businesses need not invest in different software to simply manage various aspects and OS fragmentation of their digital kiosks. Scalefusion helps businesses save costs and efforts spent on purchasing the licenses and training IT teams to use different software and tools for their diverse kiosks types.
- Private App Distribution with Enterprise Store
Most Kiosk Software, including Scalefusion MDM, allows IT admins to push apps on their Android, Apple and Windows devices from the Google PlayStore, Apple App Store and Windows Business Store respectively. But with Scalefusion, you can gain an edge and push your in-house apps by uploading APK files, IPA files, PList links, PKG files, UWP files or MSI files on the Scalefusion Enterprise Store.
Closing Lines
As customer expectations increase, businesses have to take measures to stay ahead of the game. Kiosks open the doors to better employee productivity and enhanced customer experience. You can make the most of your digital kiosks by being aware of the challenges and planning a mitigation strategy with the right kiosk management software.
