“Unrecognised item in the bagging area” is becoming a key phrase in the shopping vocabulary. Is there any machine more incomprehensible than the self-service check out in a supermarket?
From the perspective of the store they are fast, efficient and, according to Asda, “improve the shopping experience for those on the go”. They are also harbingers of a bright future in which customer facing staff will be superfluous - improving profitability no end.
From the standpoint of the customer they are a logistical disaster area and a constant cause of frustration, embodying, as they do, an astonishing lack of intuition about customer behaviour at the till.
So bad is this that, far from releasing staff from the onerous business of dealing with customers, one supermarket of my acquaintance has a team of supervisors helping customers process their purchases – so much for self service.
Treating the customer as a nuisance (TCAN) is a stratagem with a long history in British retailing. The reason Basil strikes our collective funny bone is that we all know a shopkeeper or hotelier that is a little bit Fawlty. Once upon a time it was just another area where the supermarkets were able to overwhelm the small retailer. The Colgate smiles and happy service in Marks & Spencer have moved the shopping experience onto a different planet from the bulldog scowls of the independent High Street. “No food, No drinks, No ice creams” (no customers)
No longer – now TCAN rules. For years some supermarkets, irritated at people only buying the same things week in week out, have moved staples around the store at regular intervals to keep customers guessing as to their location. Now the irritation has moved into the bagging area. The enormous convenience of having someone to bag up your goods has long since been abandoned on grounds of cost. Now the very existence of a manned till is at risk for the same reason.
The holy grail of the supermarket is for customers to shop for goods and leave the premises having had their value charged automatically to a credit card. Once suppliers get their act together with RFiD chips, this will become a reality, in the meantime however we are stuck with the inconvenience of scanning the barcode on every item.
TCAN dictates that this is the customers problem – hence the self service check out. Research by retail banking consultancy RBR estimates that some 15,000 of the brutes will be in operation in UK stores by 2011, up from 7,000 in 2008. Already twenty five percent of sales in Tesco use the technology.
There is, however, some anecdotal evidence of a fightback. Cowes, famous for yachting rather than shopping, has two supermarkets – a small Sainsburys that replaced Somerfield this summer and a slightly larger Co-op about 200 yards apart. The Sainsburys has five self-service checkouts and two manned tills. The Co-op has five manned tills and no self service checkout.
The Sainsburys store can be distinguished by a long queue of increasingly disgruntled customers at the manned checkout. Behind the till a surly apparatchik exhorts the customers to use the self service machines which, for the most part, stand empty. The Co-op, by contrast, sees a regular throng of happy shoppers in conversation with staff who are universally friendly and welcoming.
A straw poll on Cowes High Street found that shoppers, initially enthused by the replacement of Somerfield with Sainsburys, clearly prefer the Co-op and everyone questioned mentioned the self-service checkouts as a reason for not shopping in Sainsburys.
It has been a long time since anyone described the Co-op as a paradigm for the way forward in supermarket retailing but, in Cowes at least, it meets expectations very well indeed.
I am no technophobe. I understand why supermarkets want to streamline the payment process but universal adoption of RFid technology is the answer not this clunky intermediate technology that puts potential customers off. "Aha!" I hear the geeks saying. "There was a time when people used to go into banks and queue up to get cash." We now have the ubiquitous provision of ATMs, yet there are still queues of people taking out and paying in cash at banks.
It could be argued that the roots of the current financial crisis can be found in the breaking of the link between the personal bank managers and their customers and its attempted replacement with a machine. Nowadays, if you want truly appalling customer service, go to a bank.
Supermarkets are not yet that bad but in many cases the implementation of self-checkout has been as crass as the technology is poor. Rather than attempt to force reluctant customers to use the machines by restricting the manning of tills, Waitrose adopt a different method. Here, upon entering the store, you are invited to take a scanner with you on your journey around the store and scan each item as you place it in your trolley. Those who want to take advantage of self-checkout are able to do so while tills and top flight customer service remain the same for those that don’t.
TCAN is a slippery slope. The retail banks have shown what can happen when it becomes embedded in strategy. Hopefully supermarkets will take note of what is happening in Cowes and on High Streets across the country as customers vote with their feet.
Sadly Bob, and I hate to break it to you, but the supermarkets don't give a rats ass what you and a few people on Cowes High Street do. Just think how much they're saving in staff costs - they can afford to lose a few punters so long as the bottom line's improving. Also, there are two other salient factors: one, people will put up with any old rubbish, and two, remember the supermarkets (along with 90% of all big business) hate their customers.
Plus, if I'm honest, robotills are miles better than the rude, chattering-to-their-mate-while-serving-you drones at my local Tescos.
Good article though!
Simon
http://www.simonmeek.com
Posted by: twitter.com/simonmeek | October 09, 2009 at 09:00 AM