The Toll of a New Machine

In some ways, the job issues are less stark at fast-food restaurants than at airline ticket counters. "You are always going to need a substantial number of people to run a McDonald's," says Liebman. "You aren't going to automate the cooking of the food, you aren't going to automate the delivery of the food, not any time soon." The McDonald's kiosks take payment by credit card; for cash, in terms of speed, it's still much quicker to have a customer step to the counter and hand over money to a person than feed bills and coins into a machine. And although it's easy to lament the steady erosion of personal contact in commerce, McDonald's is rarely the source of richly satisfying service encounters.

Kinetics CEO Melnik has been working on travel kiosks for more than 10 years and sees the kiosk business as a graveyard of silly ideas. "We are an industry built on failures," he says. "People are enamored with kiosks. There are kiosks all over the place that no one uses: kiosks at the mall for shopping, kiosks for community information, kiosks for job listings."

Kinetics has been successful, Melnik says, because it isn't trying to trick-up an ordinary experience with a "multimedia experience." "We focus on transactions that already exist," he says, and he wants machines that make those transactions steadily simpler. "I think that 10 years from now, serving yourself will be the default, versus now, where it's the exception," he says.

And when you raise your eyes from the airline business--where Kinetics has had a dramatic impact while selling 1,341 machines in 2003, manufacturing an average of just 5 a day--the market size, and the potential for transformation, is stunning. Kinetics is already talking to rental-car, cruise-ship, movie-theater, and hotel companies. The fast-food business alone could keep Kinetics busy for years. The top five fast-food chains by revenue--McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and Subway--have 48,000 restaurants in the United States.

It's easy to envision the typical fast-food restaurant installing a couple of kiosks inside. But for impact, the real key is the drive-through lane, where a Kinetics touch-screen kiosk, mounted on a pole and weatherproofed, could solve a problem that has confounded engineers for 40 years: our inability to be heard through the drive-through speaker when we shout, "No mustard!"

Sidebar: So You Want to Hire a Robot: The Dos and Don'ts of Self-Service Automation

Here are many reasons Kinetics' self-service check-in machines have swept through the nation's airports in just the last three years. Americans are much more comfortable with computers than they were even five years ago. And the airlines desperately needed a more effective and efficient way of getting passengers through airports. But Kinetics also thinks about self-service in ways that have made its kiosks particularly appealing--to both passengers and airlines. Its principles of self-service design could be effective in all kinds of settings.

• Automate to simplify, not to be cute. From vending machines to ATMs, the key is to automate a task that already needs to be done, not to invent a task and then provide a computer to do it. In both airports and fast-food restaurants, kiosks provide a service that customers already need. And they do it with a complete lack of self-aggrandizing flourish. It's not about the technology, it's about the task.
• Bite off less than you can chew. The first versions of Kinetics' machines in airports didn't allow customers to upgrade to first class or go on standby for a different flight. Kinetics gave customers a chance to learn the system, and to develop confidence in a new technology, before adding layers of complexity. Now airport machines offer upgrades and alternate flights, and some airlines even use them to automatically rebook passengers when there are weather or equipment delays.
• Use automation to improve the task at hand. Airport kiosks change the experience of checking in by showing passengers a map of the airplane, where they are sitting, and where there are open seats. They make checking in not just faster, but better. McDonald's customers who use a Kinetics kiosk to place their orders have absolute confidence that the "no onions" request has been made. In both cases, kiosks provide not just convenience but a sense of power and control.
• Remember, automation doesn't mean standardization. With each of its airline clients, Kinetics sits down with a fresh sheet of paper. It tries to understand the priorities of each airline independently, in order to craft a self-service experience that matches the airline's needs. For airlines that carry mostly business fliers, passengers are offered the first-class upgrade option quickly; for airlines carrying mostly tourists, the "How many bags are you checking?" screen may come sooner. Part of self-service is paying attention to how many different selves you might be serving.

Charles Fishman, a Fast Company senior writer, takes his airline seats aisle, far forward and his burgers with no mayo.