Self Service Checkouts May Not Be The Best Option For Retailers
Jun 10, 2015 Comments (0)
Further to news last month that Morrisons has made the decision to replace some of its self-service checkouts with manned stations, following 96% of their polled customers saying their preferred someone a the till.
Reports suggest that there are now more self-service checkouts in the UK than across the whole of Europe but there are clearly still issues with their overall performance, as one survey revealed that over 60% of customers didn’t like using them.
However, due to the complex nature of the units and the security issues associated with them (i.e the cash inside), manufacturers currently do not allow retailers to use contractors to help service and maintain these machines in the same way as they do for other business critical equipment such as tills, scanners and printers. Barron McCann currently work on 6-7,000 traditional fixes per month across retail stores in the UK, although this does not include self-service checkouts for the reasons mentioned above.
For retailers, they are not cheap to set up either, as a typical four lane set up can cost in the region of £85,000 to install*. Self service checkouts are extremely complex pieces of equipment which include scales, scanners, touch screens, software, till, receipt roll, card and cash payment processing as well as the ability to provide cash back to the customer in the form of both notes and change.
For retailers, they are not cheap to set up either, as a typical four lane set up can cost in the region of £85,000 to install*. Self service checkouts are extremely complex pieces of equipment which include scales, scanners, touch screens, software, till, receipt roll, card and cash payment processing as well as the ability to provide cash back to the customer in the form of both notes and change.
This means that there are a vast number of things that can go wrong compared to traditional till points and in many cases, the problems cannot be manually overridden or an alternative way round devised in store as you sometimes see happening on traditional checkouts. What’s more, the primary users of self-service checkouts are the people who are least trained in their use – the public!
As a result, reliability and till downtime continues to be a challenge for retailers who are actively promoting the use of self-service checkouts in their stores. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Morrisons have plans to re-introduce more staffed checkouts as ultimately, the customer preference will always be the overriding factor.
As a result, reliability and till downtime continues to be a challenge for retailers who are actively promoting the use of self-service checkouts in their stores. With this in mind, it is no surprise that Morrisons have plans to re-introduce more staffed checkouts as ultimately, the customer preference will always be the overriding factor.
*Reference source: http://web.mit.edu/2.744/www/Project/Assignments/humanUse/lynette/2-About%20the%20machine.html
Fiona Cowlam
The blogs I will post will be from various member of the Barron McCann team. From the MD to our Service Managers, Workshop team and Engineers. We will be commenting on all the issues that our customers in retail and government face and share our expertise and experience as a major supplier of IT Service across the UK and Europe.
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