The Toll of a New Machine

Instead, the story of Kinetics offers a glimpse of the continued power of computers, automation, and the Internet to transform our lives as both workers and consumers--a power that, far from having plateaued, is only just getting started. Information technology hasn't touched lots of things that are just waiting to be automated, computerized, or kiosked. That they will be automated seems inevitable. But the results aren't so clear. Will all these smart machines create more jobs and free workers to tackle more rewarding, more complex tasks? Or will we gradually see the disappearance of a whole category of frontline workers? Will kiosks leave customers feeling well cared for and more closely linked to the businesses that use them, or frustrated and trapped in a real-world version of voice-mail hell? The answers have a lot more to do with how a company uses such machines than with the technology itself.

Kinetics, which delivered its first machines to Alaska Airlines in 1996, has transformed a kludgy, aggravating part of the air-travel experience that has long resisted improvement. In December, 70.3% of Northwest Airlines' passengers checked themselves in for their flights, the majority using Kinetics' kiosks, the rest online, a function made possible by Kinetics' software. That's up from 50% in May and 20% in 2001.

Entering an arena dominated by muscular global players such as NCR, Diebold, Siemens, and IBM, Kinetics has consistently beaten the giants in head-to-head competition for business. Kinetics' technology is running not just the self-check-in machines of Alaska, Continental, Delta, and Northwest, but also AirTran, Hawaiian, and Frontier. In March, Kinetics won the business of United Airlines, which had been using IBM. United plans to begin installing Kinetics' machines immediately. The company's software makes possible the newer Internet check-in process for many airlines; it runs the ticket-issuing system for Orbitz; and, along with its hardware, is spreading to gates at many airports to speed boarding.

Unlike many information-age companies, there is nothing virtual about Kinetics. The company takes pride in doing every-thing: Employees write the software, design the hardware, and staff a storefront factory in Lake Mary. A field group of 12 technicians keeps the airport kiosks running at what Continental says is 99.5% reliability. And CEO, president, and founder David Melnik says privately held Kinetics is profitable and has been so almost since its first contract. "Companies multiples of our size don't have the impact on culture and business that we do," he says. "That's a pretty radical thing. I think it's pretty cool."

At Continental Airlines, 66% of U.S. passengers check themselves in at Kinetics kiosks. "We never thought it would go above 25%," says Scott O'Leary, Continental's senior manager in charge of airport self-service for passengers. As for the lines that used to bedevil even business travelers, says O'Leary, "We are essentially queueless." And once customers are standing at a kiosk, he says, "the mean check-in time is 66 seconds. For customers with no bags, it's 30 seconds." At big airports, your plane is more likely to stand in line to take off than you are to check in.

Self-service has begun to pop up in so many places--photo-processing kiosks in drugstores, self-testing kiosks to renew driver's licenses, automated toll payment--that the technology has quickly gone from novel to unremarkable. But self-service often feels like the opposite of service, or it feels as if the customer has been made an involuntary, unpaid worker. Whatever the efficiency of pumping your own gas, doing so doesn't make the experience of filling your tank any better; depending on the weather, doing it yourself is often downright unpleasant.

But here's something every airline passenger knows: Kinetics' machines actually improve the task they automate. They don't just make the experience quicker, they make it better. Jeffrey Lammers, who used to design nuclear weapons and until February was Kinetics' head of hardware engineering, says, "You won't find anyone who flies a lot who won't just hug these machines."

The self-service kiosk shows you a seat map of the plane you're boarding--you see where your seat is, you see what seats are still open, and you're free to pick one you like better. And only you know that after your first choice--aisle, far forward, but not bulkhead--and your second choice--window, far forward, but not bulkhead--your third choice is any row where there's an empty middle seat. Except not farther back than row 20, because you don't want to wait 15 minutes to get off the plane. And then there's your fourth, fifth, and sixth choice. No ticket agent has the patience to walk through this with any passenger, let alone every passenger. The kiosk handles it in seconds. And it can be programmed to operate in 12 languages. "It's the end of the 'veil of secrecy' at check-in," says Continental's O'Leary. "It's a quick, informative check-in, instead of standing in line for customer service." When this kind of automation is done right, Kinetics' CEO Melnik says, "People don't perceive it as technology, they perceive it as an enabler in their life."