Who finds out when a bay crashes at 9pm?
Every sim venue has bays that freeze. The difference between a good unmanned venue and a bad one isn't how often it happens. It's who finds out, and how fast.
We've seen most of the ways venues handle it, from our own bays at Bunkerbay and from talking to other operators. They fall into four camps.
1. The customer finds out, and fixes it themselves
One unmanned venue we've looked at hands customers a padlock code so they can open the cabinet and restart the PC themselves, mid-booking. It works, after a fashion. But you're asking someone who's paid for an hour of golf to become your IT support, in the dark, with a club in one hand. The operators we spoke to who'd seen it were put off straight away.
2. The customer finds out, and messages you
This is the most common setup: a phone number or WhatsApp on the wall. It's fine at 2pm. At 9pm it means you're answering from the sofa, trying to talk someone through a restart, or driving in. If you don't reply quickly, they give up, you refund the hour, and the review mentions it.
3. The kit finds out, and tells you
Better: the bay reports that something's wrong and you get an alert. You still have to do something about it, but you hear first and can act before the customer's waited ten minutes.
4. The customer says it's stuck, and it's fixed
The best version: the customer messages or calls, the bay is restarted remotely straight away, and they're told how long it'll take. You only hear about it if the restart doesn't work. In Bayi's first three days live at Bunkerbay, two frozen bays were fixed this way while the customers were still in them. Nobody had to go to site.
What the operators we talk to care about
When we ask venue owners what matters most in a fit-out, the answer is rarely the wall finish or the lounge. It's "if the tech goes down, it's back within the hour". Customers forgive a fault that's fixed quickly. They don't forgive being left stuck.
Questions to ask about your own setup
- If a bay froze at 9pm tonight, who would know first?
- How long would the customer wait before anyone replied?
- Can the PC, projector and screen be restarted without someone on site?
- Would you know if a restart didn't work?
- Do you know which bay fails most often?
If the honest answer to the first question is "the customer, then me, on my phone", there's a lot of evening to be won back. Our remote fix playbook covers the practical side.
Fixed before they've put the club down
BAYi restarts the bay from the customer's message and only bothers you if it doesn't come back. Book a 20-minute video demo to see it at Bunkerbay.