Kiosk Mode – Introducing an Important Concept

Today, digital kiosks have become an integral part of the marketing campaigns of most businesses. Businesses place kiosks strategically in high-traffic areas in order to display information through videos and advertisements or facilitate small transactions such as making payments, placing orders, withdrawing money, and so on. In short, they use kiosks to serve a particular purpose. Businesses can either build kiosks from scratch or convert computing devices into kiosks by using kiosk mode. 

What is kiosk mode?

Kiosk mode is a feature of mobile device management solutions that allows businesses to turn off-the-shelf computing devices into kiosks or dedicated-purpose devices. The kiosk mode locks devices down to single or multiple pre-approved applications. Let us take a closer look at the different types of kiosks and the use cases of the kiosk mode.

Use Cases of Kiosks 

Today, most businesses provide mobile devices to their workforces- to empower them to do their work more efficiently or make self-service more convenient for their customers. They can use the kiosk feature of mobile device management solutions to convert these devices into dedicated-purpose devices. Here’s a list of the most commonly used kiosks. 

Informational Kiosks

Kiosks play a crucial role in providing information to customers about a company’s products and features. Through informational videos and content, companies can demonstrate to their customers how to use a particular product. Apart from offering information, these kiosks offer other useful services such as printing check-in badges or ID cards, booking appointments, printing bus or train tickets, scanning tickets at events, and so on.

Internet Kiosks

Internet kiosks provide customers or visitors with quick access to specific web pages. Thus, they are usually found in libraries, railway stations, museums, airports, and other public places. These kiosks are locked down to allow access to only approved web pages, such as those providing information on eateries and transportation schedules in hotel lobbies, health-related information in hospital waiting rooms, and so on.

Wayfinding Kiosks

These dedicated-purpose devices display 3D models of buildings (including elevations, pathways, and more) to help people navigate unfamiliar surroundings. Wayfinding kiosks are most commonly used in colleges, high schools, hospitals, airports, and shopping malls.

Digital Signage

These kiosks can display both static and interactive advertisements in a loop. So, businesses use them to showcase company products and services and to increase customer engagement. They are most often placed in quick-service restaurants, stadiums, shopping malls, movie theaters, and airports.

Benefits of Using Kiosk Mode

The first and foremost benefit of using kiosk mode is that businesses can convert off-the-shelf mobile devices into purpose-specific tools. This ensures that they do not have to build kiosks from scratch, which can be a time- and money-intensive project. In addition to this, other benefits of using the kiosk mode include the following:

• Better device performance – Since users can access specific pre-approved apps or websites only, the chance of device misuse and security threats reduces drastically. This translates to fewer security incidents and troubleshooting requests.
• Improved employee productivity – Locking down devices to specific apps and/or websites ensures employees stay on task. This increases their productivity.
• Reduced maintenance costs – Kiosks require very little maintenance. Moreover, businesses can easily monitor and secure kiosks remotely if they have the right software. This reduces overall maintenance costs.

Conclusion

With more and more businesses adopting mobile ways of working and attempting to reach a larger audience, kiosks are becoming mainstream components of a company’s marketing investments. Since it’s not always possible for these businesses to build custom kiosks, they can use a mobile device management solution, such as SureMDM by 42Gears, to enable kiosk mode on their devices. These solutions also make it easy for businesses to manage, monitor, and secure mobile devices. Businesses can also use standalone solutions, such as SureLock by 42Gears, to turn their devices into kiosks.