How PodPlay Uses Kisi to Power its Autonomous Operating Model

PodPlay Technologies is the leading company powering a new type of model for experiential consumer businesses: autonomous experiences.

Autonomous experiences – accessed on-demand using a smartphone – enable us to engage in activities that are inefficient or cost prohibitive to do in the confines of our homes. Until recently, creating a profitable business delivering these experiences has been difficult due to high rent and labor costs.

Operating autonomously is a game changer for business owners. Autonomy drastically reduces operating costs by almost entirely eliminating labor from the equation. Without the need for staff, an autonomous space can stay open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Autonomy reduces cost while simultaneously increasing capacity – bending the usual economic relationship between cost and capacity.

Today, PodPlay leverages Kisi for seamless access control, fully integrated with PodPlay’s white-label apps, to support more than 30 venues that are operating autonomously across table tennis, pool, pickleball, golf simulators, and even dog washes.

PodPlay built the tech that powers PingPod, and, in 2023, formed PodPlay to offer the full tech stack as a white label SaaS solution to like-minded sports venues. The PodPlay solution integrates reservations, event management, coach connect, analytics, and payments software with hardware-enabled features like scoreboards, customer initiated replays, door access, and 24/7 remote monitoring.

When a customer arrives at the venue, they pull out their phone, call up their reservation, and if they are within a window of time before their reservation, they will simply “tap to unlock the door”.

No codes to punch in or to scan, just a single click to access the space.

By integrating Kisi, PodPlay allows venues to:

• Welcome Customers Anytime - venues can increase overall capacity by operating 24/7.

• Create a Seamless Customer Experience - customers use their phone and can access the venue with a single press of a button. As we like to say, “Use your phone to put down your phone.”

• Reduce Staffing Costs - venues can eliminate the cost and hiring challenges associated with staffing a front desk.

Companies that pursue a business model that fundamentally changes human behavior often meet with early objections of the form: “no one will [ insert new behavior].”

For PingPod, the early objection was that no one would want to go to a ping pong club with no employees. The idea is that a sports venue would suffer without the “human touch”. But we regularly hear from venue operators that finding and retaining quality staff is a big pain point. And by eliminating staff a venue can offer proximity, scheduling flexibility, and a quality product at a reasonable price.

Another common critique was that venues aren’t safe without staff onsite. Would customers steal equipment? Would people engage in activities other than intended? What about fights? In close to five years of operating autonomously, PingPod has had no such incidents of significance, and we believe the Pods to be safer than standard venues that serve alcohol. In contrast to practically any other physical store you can think of, the doors of venues using PodPlay to operate autonomously are default locked thanks to our integration with Kisi. No one can enter the venue without a reservation, so a customer would need a smartphone, credit card on file, and to pay money in order to engage in bad behavior.

Operating autonomously makes it easier for customers to access fun and engaging activities when and where they want. Autonomy creates scheduling and geographical convenience for customers at affordable price points. With low operating costs, venues are able to offer a quality service at a fair price. A customer can easily book a space where they want, when they want.

*Originally published by Ben Borton, Nov 26th, 2024. The article is on PodPlay's blog.