NEW YORK — The KioskCom Self Service Expo opened in the heart of Midtown, Manhattan, with two significant announcements from NCR Corp.
NCR pulled the sheet off its new point-of-decision kiosk — the NCR SelfServ 60, which is designed to provide an interactive experience for the consumer in order to buoy them along through the purchasing process.
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| Photograph by Travis Kircher The NCR SelfServe 60 integrates Intel vPro technology, has a slim, sleek form factor and represents a significant leap forward from its predecessor, the EasyPoint 42. |
According to a news release distributed at the show, the NCR SelfServ 60 is customizable to help enhance a business's brand. Deployers can choose from a number of configuration and design options, such as brand color and logos. Multiple mounting options also are available.
The NCR SelfServ 60 integrates Intel vPro technology, including the next-generation Intel Core 2 Duo processor and Mobile Intel GM45 Express chipset. With these technologies, the kiosk can run more advanced, engaging self-service applications, NCR says, creating an enhanced experience for consumers and the opportunity for companies to offer increasingly complex transactions.
Intel vPro technology maximizes system availability for businesses with "out-of-band" manageability and serviceability — meaning diagnostics can be accomplished remotely.
Donna Stevens, product manager for kiosk infrastructure at NCR, says the new SelfServ 60 is a substantial improvement over its predecessor, the EasyPoint 42.
"Nowadays, people want kiosks to have a slim, sleek form-factor to really show off that modern iPod look, and really capture the aesthetics and the marketing and the branding that (our) customers want to portray to their self-service customers — to the consumers," Stevens said. "The EasyPoint 42, while an all-in-one integrated footprint, didn't have the feature functionality and the slim form-factor that this new unit has, because of the new technology and our ability to integrate that."
During the show, Peter R. Charpentier used a SelfServ 60 kiosk to demo a retail application that lets users speak live, one-on-one, with customer-service representatives in remote locations. The customer-service representative, who just so happened to be on the West Coast, appeared on the screen during a demo at the show to greet show goers in New York.
That application is the result of a reseller agreement between NCR and Experticity. The agreement, also announced during the expo, allows NCR to resell the Experticity multichannel technology platform worldwide.
Attendance numbers for KioskCom are not yet available, though Lawrence Dvorchik, general manager of the show, says he expects a 32 percent increase in pre-qualified, pre-registered attendants from last year. KioskCom runs Oct. 15-16 in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.
