Kiosk & Display (K&D) is a leading provider of digital signage: they plan, install, deploy, design, and manage dynamic and interactive signage and wayfinding in banking/financial, education, fitness, hospitality, retail, healthcare, and industry.
When one of their customers has a technical issue, they need to fix it fast. And once deployed, if a unit had an issue, their customer would call K&D for support and K&D would call the manufacturer. The issue would be placed in the manufacturer’s support queue, staff would sometimes spend hours on hold or wait days for an automated email reply. Too often, after they provided an error log, the hardware manufacturer would blame the software company, and their customers were stuck.
This was a time consuming, expensive and inefficient process, and K&D knew they could find a better solution—a smaller computer company that would provide personalized and responsive customer service, a partner who cared as much as about K&D’s customers as K&D did. They knew they could find Shuttle.
Shuttle is known for its small form factor computers that are as powerful as typical towers, so Ackerman chose to standardize with Shuttle for all of its digital signage implementations. What he didn’t realize were the added benefits that Shuttle provides too, like customizing BIOS settings and pre-imaging services.
At this time, K&D uses Shuttle’s DS77U, an industry-grade media player made for commercial applications that require long-term operations like in digital signage, kiosks, and more. Its slim design makes it suitable to fit in tight spaces. Approved for 24/7 operation, the unit provides stable operation to run reliably for long-term demands of any vertical application. With a passive thermal cooling system, the fanless design reduces power consumption required by a fan, and using solid-state disks make it completely noise-free.
Shuttle’s to customized K&D’s technical specifications, BIOS, golden image, warranty, and support. Nathan Ackerman, director of operations, Kiosk & Display, said, “Because Shuttle ships my products ready to go, our prep time is down to 15 minutes. That’s an 87.5% savings in time, which is a huge gain for my install and support team. And if I need to update the golden image, I can send it over to Shuttle and they’ll have it uploaded the very next day. Our operations metrics have improved significantly.”
The Shuttle team is based in California, and because it’s a small company, K&D’s team gets almost-instantaneous support. Human beings answer calls and emails; problems are managed within minutes; repair plans or replacements are put in place within 24 hours. No one stays on hold forever listening to a recording; no one communicates with bots; no one waits for replies or repairs that may take days. Shuttle is a connected business partner that offers real-time solutions.
Ackerman added, “I switched to a small company that is more nimble and more responsive, which has made a huge difference in terms of product reliability and customer satisfaction. With Shuttle, I can speak directly to the product manager and engineers; I have a great relationship with them; and I can rely on them to take care of my customer’s needs. Now I can relax, knowing that Shuttle has my back.”
