Handling customer issues

Even a perfectly working booth occasionally makes a customer unhappy: a blurry photo, a print that came out wrong, a coin that didn't register. This article gives you a playbook for the most common situations.

Who this is for: Operators on the floor.

The general principle

When something goes wrong, the customer doesn't care whose fault it is. They just want a working print or their money back. Your job is to:

  1. Apologize first (even if it wasn't your fault)
  2. Decide quickly whether to comp / retry / refund
  3. Document the resolution in the booth so the audit trail is clean
  4. Get the customer their print or refund within a few minutes

The Credits tab is your tool for #3 (see Adding credits manually).

Situation 1: A print came out blurry

What happened: The customer moved during the countdown, the camera focus was confused, or the lighting was bad.

What to do:

  1. Apologize.
  2. Open admin → Credits tab.
  3. Add credits equal to one session of the same product.
  4. Tell the customer to walk back around to the kiosk and start a new session. It's on you.
  5. Watch the new session complete successfully.
  6. If the new print is good, you're done.

If the second print is also blurry, the camera or the lighting is the actual problem. See Camera not working (coming soon) or adjust camera settings in the Diagnostics tab.

Situation 2: A print came out with wrong colors / streaks

What happened: The dye-sub ribbon may be misaligned, or the media is defective.

What to do:

  1. Apologize.
  2. Take the booth out of customer service temporarily (if you can. Easiest is to put it in Free Play mode briefly to flag it).
  3. Open the printer service door and reseat the ribbon and paper.
  4. Run a Test Print from the Diagnostics tab.
  5. If the test print is good, comp the customer (add credits) and put the booth back in service.
  6. If the test print is also bad, you may need a new media roll. See Changing the print roll (coming soon).

Situation 3: The customer paid but the print never came out

What happened: The printer jammed, ran out of paper, or went offline mid-print.

What to do:

  1. Apologize.
  2. Open the printer service door and look for a jam or media issue.
  3. Clear the jam, reseat the paper, or change the roll.
  4. Power-cycle the printer if it's offline.
  5. Wait for the Printer pill in admin to go green.
  6. Open the Credits tab and add credits equal to the failed session. The customer's original credits were already deducted, so they need a fresh batch to retry.
  7. Tell the customer to start a new session.
  8. Confirm the new print succeeds.

If the printer keeps failing, take the booth offline (Free Play mode + sign on the front saying "Out of Order") and contact support.

Situation 4: The customer inserted coins but the booth didn't credit them

What happened: The PCB is not talking to the booth, the COM port is wrong, or the payment device rejected the coin without registering.

What to do:

  1. Apologize.
  2. Open admin → Diagnostics → PCB section.
  3. Look at the PCB status. Is it Active? Is it listening on a COM port?
  4. If the PCB is offline, see Payment not registering (coming soon).
  5. If the customer's coin was rejected and they have it in their hand still, ask them to try again. It might just have been a bad insert.
  6. If the customer claims they paid and you can't verify in the Credits tab, trust the customer for the first incident. Refund them in cash from the cash box, document the incident, and watch closely.
  7. If a customer comes back claiming this every time, it's worth investigating whether the payment device is undercount. Contact support.

Situation 5: A customer wants a refund

What happened: The customer changed their mind, or the print was acceptable but they want their money back.

What to do:

Refund policies are up to you and your venue. BoothIQ doesn't enforce a refund policy. Common approaches:

  • No refunds, only retakes. This is the easiest policy. Tell the customer you can give them a free retry but not their cash back.
  • Refunds at operator discretion. Handle case by case.
  • Refunds for unprintable sessions only. Refund only when the booth was at fault.

When you do refund a customer:

  1. Take the cash from the cash box and give it to them.
  2. Open the Credits tab and deduct an equivalent amount from the booth's credit balance to keep the audit trail clean.
  3. (Optional) Document the refund somewhere outside the booth: a notebook, a Google Sheet, etc.

Situation 6: A customer left without their print

What happened: The customer paid, the print came out, but they walked away before picking it up.

What to do:

  • Hold the print at the booth (some operators put a small basket next to the kiosk for orphaned prints).
  • If the customer comes back asking for it, hand it over.
  • If they don't come back, you can offer it to a friend, throw it out, or save it for a "lost prints" wall display.

There's no admin-side action needed. The session was paid and the print was made. The booth doesn't track who picked up which print.

Situation 7: The customer says the booth crashed mid-session

What happened: The kiosk became unresponsive, or showed a hardware error screen, or restarted unexpectedly.

What to do:

  1. Apologize.
  2. Open admin → Diagnostics and check all hardware pills.
  3. If something is red, fix it (see Troubleshooting (coming soon)).
  4. Comp the customer (add credits equal to one session) and let them retry.
  5. If this happens repeatedly, take the booth offline and contact support. This is a recurring issue, not a one-time blip.

Situation 8: A customer asks "can you email me the photo?"

What happened: The customer wants a digital copy of their print.

What to do:

The version of BoothIQ described in these docs doesn't have a built-in email-the-photo-to-customer feature. The closest features are:

  • Phone Print. But that goes the wrong way (customer's phone → kiosk, not kiosk → customer's phone)
  • Save photos to USB. Operator-side only, not customer-facing

Tell the customer: "Sorry, we can't email it to you, but you can take a photo of the print with your phone." Most customers accept this.

If multiple customers ask for this, talk to your BoothIQ point of contact. It may be on the roadmap.

Situation 9: A customer is trying to use the booth without paying

What happened: The customer is tapping through the screens but never inserts coins, or they're trying to find a way around the payment screen.

What to do:

The booth is designed to prevent this. The payment screen waits for credits to reach the total before advancing. They literally cannot get a print without paying (except in Free Play mode).

If the customer is just confused, walk them through how to insert coins.

If they're trying to game the system, politely tell them they need to pay to use the booth.

Logging issues for support

If you have a recurring issue you want to escalate to support, gather:

  • The Booth ID (from the Cloud Sync tab)
  • The time and date the issue occurred
  • A short description of what happened
  • (Optional) A photo of the bad print or the error screen

Send this to support. They can pull logs from the cloud (if your booth is registered) and investigate.

Common operator mistakes

Refunding cash AND comping with credits for the same session.

Pick one. Document either way.

Not logging refunds at all.

Always deduct in the Credits tab to match cash going out.

Letting customers self-serve from admin.

Never give customers admin access.

Apologizing for things that aren't actually broken.

Confirm the issue first by checking admin.

Powering off the booth as the first response to any issue.

Try the diagnostic flow first; only power-cycle as a last resort.

Verify it worked

You're handling customer issues effectively when:

  • Customer complaints turn into satisfied customers within a few minutes
  • Your end-of-day cash reconciles cleanly with Sales tab + manual adjustments
  • You're not getting repeat complaints about the same issue

Next steps