Using Technology To Alienate Customers
Everyone is concerned with costs. Concentrating on that at the expense of how revenue is generated can spell disaster. Here’s a case where a computer system helped set the stage.
Labor in the US has always been expensive, which is one of the reasons that the US has consistently been a leader in applying capital to make labor more efficient. Often this capital takes the form of technology, of late software based technology, something to be expected in this information age. Grocery stores have a particular need for technology to control costs, which to date have mainly taken the form of managing inventory in various ways, the most recent being demand prediction (still a work in progress) and Just In Time in store deliveries.
The most visible labor in most grocery stores, and certainly the large national super market chains, are the people at the checkout stands. They not only scan the items, but make myriad decisions in the purchase flow, such as what to do when an item doesn’t have a bar code, or not even in the inventory system, such as flowers that have just arrived. Few would question that the checkers add value to a transaction, not and not least in being, well, human.
For some time we’ve been going to one of these national grocery stores, somewhat upscale and in a nice area, with a large selection and helpful checkers, produce managers, bakers, to name a few. The isles are well stocked, the floors are spotlessly clean, and while getting through the checkout may take some time, it is mitigated by the fact that we’re familiar with most of the checkers and there’s always something interesting to talk about.
Grocery stores are in a tough, low margined commodity business, with high fixed costs and lost of competition, all of whom with the same problems. Most of the stores are public companies with all the pressures to perform and at least meet their numbers in tough times. Pretty much everything that can be automated has, so there aren’t too many places left to rationalize costs by applying technology.
Still, labor is very visible and isn’t getting any cheaper. So, with hope springing eternally, the store’s management decided to put in some self checking systems, seeing how well these have done in other places such as hardware stores. Not the first time this has been tried in a grocery store. One would imagine that the self checkout systems would have been, well, checked out fairly thoroughly.
Wrong. The change dispenser is in a bad location, requiring hand contortions to retrieve any, the lookup screens are crowded with small images of poor quality, the entry processing is so slow that the system is confused about when something should be weighed, as well as when something should be put into a bag, the bagging area so small as to be useless, the card reader on the opposite side of the fascia as the touch screen. It was as if the designers went to school to come up with something so bad.
The bright lights who came up with this concentrated on the cost side, and missed the revenue side completely. What they are doing is displacing their labor costs to the customer, which is OK as far as that goes. But the customer isn’t getting anything in return, certainly not reduced prices, and whatever reduction in checkout time that may occur occasionally is more than offset by the increased frustration in having to deal with a bad design. Even more amazing, the system is still there, unchanged, after some two months. Of course, the number of human checkers has been reduced
Sooner or later, the customers figure this out, and the choice that they see is very clear. The change to a self checkout computer system has no net benefit. The personal contact with a checker has been cast aside in favor of an impersonal and annoying contrivance. Making the customer change customary purchasing to meet the contrivance’s requirements that seem ill designed when contrasted competitors’ systems has only one long term result: Customers vote with their feet, and whatever cost savings that may have been imagined are more than erased by loss of revenue.
There’s a new ‘neighborhood’ store managed by an English company not too far from us. Not as upscale, but the place is kept clean. And the self checkout system works. Same equipment as the store we used to go to, but different software. There are some layout changes, like the change dispenser and a convenient conveyer. The system is fast, never gets confused, all the product images are large and crystal clear. And for most items the prices are better.
A Word From Our Sponser
Clean Up Source Content With 
FutureWare FormatStripper Before Importing It Into Your Layout Tool
Tags: alienating customers, grocery computer systems, inappropriate technology, inventory management, POS software, self checkout