ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT
Self-Checkout: What Constitutes “Real” Customer Service?
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ou may have recently read news articles or heard about discussions regarding a growing debate over whether self-checkout is worth the investment. USA Today featured a piece last April 6 entitled, “Self-Checkout Lanes Boost Convenience, Theft Risk.” Soon thereafter, a discussion on the Retailwire blog appeared entitled, “Does Self-Checkout Cause Theft?” The theme in both focused around the cost-benefits of using self-checkout lanes in retail stores. More recently, I have had a number of conversations with LP executives who have admitted re-evaluating self-checkout in their stores. After first being used in England, self-checkout slowly spread to the U.S., primarily in grocery and home-center stores. The logical rationale of this technology was that if customers could check themselves out, customer service would improve and labor costs at the front end would be reduced. The net results would be a win-win for the retailer, yielding higher sales, lower overhead, and greater net profits. Now we are beginning to hear from those who are realizing that there is a hidden down-side to self-checkout that raises serious questions about increasing the use of this technology.
by Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D. Dr. Hollinger is chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also director of the Security Research Project, which annually conducts the National Retail Security Survey (soccrim.clas.ufl.edu/criminology/srp/srp.html). Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-294-7175. © 2013 Richard C. Hollinger
However, after reading about the self-checkout debate, I remembered that my own retail career started in a grocery store before POS barcodes were developed. I knew our regular customers and often addressed them by name. Unfortunately, according to some, the personal relationship element in retailing has been lost forever. One could argue that this loss of customer service is exacerbated by self-checkout and is not a good thing for either society or the retail industry.
Customer service is not always about checkout speed and the lowest price. Nor should we in loss prevention forget the deficiencies that self-checkout can create that allows or creates more shrinkage. Without adequate personal attention, the dishonest associate and shoplifter will always take advantage of weaknesses that we often ignore in our constantly increased reliance on technology, instead of people, to prevent loss.
Self-Checkout Continues to Grow
The research and advisory firm, IHL Group, estimates that self-checkouts will increase in North America by 10 percent in the next few years. They see the greatest growth in convenience, hardware, and drug stores. On the other hand, Malay Kundu, founder of StopLift Checkout Vision Systems, reports that users of their video analytic software are discovering higher theft levels…whether intentional or not…that are up to five times greater than checkouts that are completed by human cashiers. I must admit that when I first found out that I could check myself out at my local home-center store, buy gas directly from the pump, and check myself in and get airline boarding passes before arriving at the airport, I was elated. Just think of the time that could be saved in my ever more complicated life. Buying items on the Internet without ever leaving home or closing my keyboard just seemed like “icing on the cake.” For technology geeks like me, allowing machines to replace time-consuming human interactions in my life seemed like the natural evolution of technology serving mankind.
26
January - February 2013
Removing Self-Checkouts
Mark Gaudette, loss prevention director at Big Y grocery stores headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts, decided to take out all of their self-checkout registers over a year ago. Although there were employee and shopper dishonesty issues occasionally related to problems at self-checkout stations, he insists that this was not the driving force behind the decision to abandon self-checkout. Instead, Big Y was most concerned that this regional grocery chain, which prided itself on delivering excellent customer service and personalized |
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