Slot floor management goes high tech

Change! It's a call for service that mingles with the sounds of a casino slot floor.

Change! Often, the call is repeated as a customer waits.And waits.Meanwhile, a bright light shines above the slot machine, alerting casino staff that there's a need on slot number 99.

Question is:Will the staff notice the light? Change! Customers can wait five, 10, even 15 minutes.

And they do not like to wait for change, a jackpot payoff or service to a machine, says Tony Marini, Eldorado Casino slot operations manager.

What's more, every minute of waiting equals a minute of non-play.

Marini thinks the Eldorado has found a high-tech way to address this persistent customer service challenge, the slot Floor Event Monitor and Dispatch System.

It's a computer program interconnecting the slots to a central computer monitored by a dispatcher.

Guest service staff wearing radios are stationed around the casino floor.When a slot player presses the change button, or help, or registers a jackpot hit, the monitor displays the request, and a dispatcher deploys staff to the customer.

The days of staff wandering around the floor looking for lights and listening for calls for change are over, says Marini.

The system, he adds, has cut response time down to within three to five minutes.

On a recent busy Saturday night that saw 2,000 calls for service, the Eldorado response time averaged four minutes, he says.

In the highly competitive slot player market, the Eldorado is betting that its quick customer service will be a marketing draw.

The casino houses 1,600 slot machines, 855 of them still coin-based, and, since installing the system, has been able to quantify what types of requests come in, as well as which casino sections suffer the longest waits.

As expected,most of its requests come from coin, not ticket-only, sections, says Marini.

But the monitoring system immediately revealed something that the casino did not expect Eldorado's mezzanine slot section was receiving noticeably slower service than the rest of the casino.

Marini's office is hooked up to the system, too, he says.Up in his office, he sees everything the dispatcher sees, including how long each response is taking.

The system, developed by Reno-based CIS Technology, Inc., which creates custom software, is the pilot for the new system, says Chris Kurtz, CIS co-owner.

The company had been pondering the system for several years.

The Eldorado,meanwhile,was pondering the same system needs.

CIS was "strongly influenced" by the Eldorado's needs, says Kurtz, in its development of the product.Now the company is gearing up to market its system, which holds an approximate price tag of $35,000 plus installation and licensing agreement fees.

"People will wait forever for their money on a slot," says Kurtz,"but they won't come back (if they have to wait too long)."

And that, exactly,was the motivating factor for CIS's development of the system.

But there are more uses, too, he adds.He sees casinos using the system for beverage requests, deploying cocktail staff on demand or dispatching staff when a high-roller plugs into a machine.

"It's a management-level tool," says Kurtz, "with instant top-down response to customer needs."

Also, he adds, one of the system's biggest returns on investment is the possibility of reducing floor staff needs.

Pinpointed service means less need for wandering staff.