No Tech For Tech's Sake
A trip to the store illuminates the ability of technology to enhance — or diminish — the shopping experience.
As a retail technology editor, I know that when it comes to the checkout, nothing is faster than a trained, experienced cashier. So whenever I shop in a store that has self-checkout lanes, I avoid them. After all, not only are customers slower than cashiers, self-checkout means I also have to scan and bag the products myself — two activities I don't do particularly well.
The CVS near my apartment in Sunnyside, N.Y., has an aggressive strategy to encourage shoppers to use the self-checkout machines. They simply don't have anyone at the manned registers. No one. Not a single body. On three separate recent visits I made to the store, the checkout lanes were empty, and a front end associate attempted to guide me toward the self-checkout, although my intended purchases required associate assistance because of age verification issues, which in turn required a page to the store manager to take care of my needs.
On another occasion, when I visited my local CVS for a simple in-and-out purchase, I figured I'd give the self-checkout a shot on my own. I scanned my two items — a BOGO — but the promotional price didn't appear on the register. I asked the associate about it.
“Do you have a club card?”
“No.”
“Then it will show up at the end.”
I scanned my other items, but immediately encountered yet another problem: The weight of one of the scanned items didn't match what I scanned. The associate rushed over to carefully balance the items on the scale. This issue was finally reconciled, but then there was yet another snag. One of the items needed age verification, which once again required associate assistance. All told, I was at the self-checkout for more than two minutes, and the associate had to help me twice.
I asked the associate why there was no one at the manned registers. “We're trying to help people with the self-checkouts,” was the reply.
“What about those who don't want to use them?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
This is a perfect example of how deploying technology for technology's sake can actually damage a customer's experience. It's clear that this CVS store is viewing self-checkouts as a way of reducing store labor, when in reality, it's really reducing service.
Self-checkouts, like any other retail technology, should have a clearly defined strategic business reason for existing, and topping the list of any of these strategies should be enhancing the customer experience or increasing the relevancy of the business to its customers.
That's the chief aim in this, our first issue of Progressive Grocer Tech, as it will be in future issues of the supplement: to cover new and emerging technology as it relates to the improvement of retail operations. Hence the tagline: “Technology and the Business of Food Retailing.”
Long gone are the days where the CIO was king. Now technology is primarily driven from the business side, with the IT department serving in a supportive role in terms of integration and maintenance. In fact, most technology decisions today involve three key groups: IT executives (who deploy, integrate and maintain), business executives (who use the technology) and corporate executives (who sign the checks).
PG Tech is written with each of these groups in mind. And in each issue we'll touch on the four key areas of the business that technology touches: In-store, Marketing/Enterprise-wide Systems, Supply Chain and Online/Mobile Technology.
We hope you enjoy this first edition of PG Tech, and welcome your feedback.