In an era marked by a huge rise in retail technological advancements aimed at enhancing convenience, the self-checkout experience can fall short of its promise, leaving shoppers grappling with frustrations and inefficiencies.
Recent observations and consumer feedback have shed light on the challenges associated with self-checkouts, underscoring the need for retailers to improve the instore experience.
While self-checkouts were introduced with the intention of speeding up the shopping experience and reducing wait times, they have frequently been marred by a myriad of inconveniences, including: self-checkout machines not scanning properly; items not being recognised; items needing approval – from alcohol to glue, to over-the-counter medicines and even non-alcoholic drinks – needing staff intervention.
The machines make customers do the work of store staff
Amidst these challenges, retailers too are urged to prioritise the optimisation of self-checkouts to better support all demographics. So, with self-checkouts causing issues on both sides, is it time for retailers to re-think and reinstate manned till areas?
The simple truth is that both customers and businesses like technology as long as it works well. Here at Volumatic we love to embrace new technology, but self-checkouts have become unreliable and are frustrating even the most loyal customers.
As cash handling experts, we regularly encourage retailers to offer their customers the choice to use cash as well as other payment methods, and the element of choice for customers extends to this too – while some shoppers are happy to use self-checkouts, others prefer to be served by a person.
By offering their customers a choice they can help keep customers happy and reduce losses and by investing in intelligent cash-handling solutions like the CCi instead, they can reduce costs, become more efficient and increase their POS security all in one.
As the retail landscape continues to evolve, it is necessary for business owners to collaborate in identifying and implementing solutions that can uphold efficiency, accessibility, and customer satisfaction at the till-point. This means that while retailers can continue to use the technology they have invested so heavily in, they should also increasingly be offering customers the option to choose between human and machine payments.
