Cashiers Put On Timer

Here I see large retailers trying to save on labor because on paper it appears that they are saving money. Perhaps they are reducing labor costs. But at what cost? Does it hurt employee morale? Does it irritate customers?

I know that, when running a huge multi-billion dollar sterile corporation, it’s very difficult to be on a personal level with both the employees and customers. However, I do know that many of my clients would never put up with a super fast cashier unless that person was super good with customers as well. I also know they would tolerate a somewhat slow cashier, especially if they could see that customers intentionally went to that cashier’s lane because of the cashier’s good personality.

There is a delicate balance between productivity and customer service. If I’m an independent grocery, I’d be happy that my big box competitor is implementing this program.

Here we have a perfect example of the bean counters running the house! Look, I’ve got no problem with the pursuit of profitability. But this initiative reeks of a complete lack of customer focus. Did they forget that it’s the customer they are trying to serve, not the bean counters?

In a grocery store in particular, the cashier is often the only human contact a customer will have. In many respects, the cashier represents the brand. In most stores the cashiers I meet are already ‘underserving’ the customer. Initiatives like this will only make a bad situation worse.

Retailers would do well to remember that the checkout is the last point of contact for the shopper on a given trip. If that last impression is “the bum’s rush” and a harried, stressed checker, then that is likely to color their total experience, and not in a good way.

Should checkers be accountable? Why not? But pure speed seems like a non-customer-centric metric. How about a team-base standard that incorporates good management as well, like average line length or customer wait times? Here’s where front end efficiency intersects with real customer service.

Almost anything good can be ruined by mismanagement, and I can’t judge one way or the other here on the implementation. However, studying something like this is right on target–even urgent. We have done studies similar to this in the past ourselves, and believe the way forward for store profits is a similar focus on how the shopper is wasting their own time when they are in the aisles of the store, NOT interacting with staff.

I’m all for tech that increases efficiency, but this tech may do harm than good. The only way I think it makes sense is if the resulting data is used to noodle new associate training practices or noodle new ways to serve customers better. My fear, however, is that this tech isn’t being used in that way. Instead, it seems to be used to speed up associates and customer service be damned.

My particular concern here is for the senior consumer. Some info regarding this demographic that retailers have ignored for way too long: they’re the fastest growing segment of the population worldwide (better figure out how to serve them because they’re not going away). They spend money on lifestyles that have changed dramatically from the rocking-chair retirement days of yore. And the retail industry is the No. 1 employer of seniors. Senior shoppers are already stressed at the register. All this tech does is increase their stress by making associates speed them through the line.

Here’s an idea: instead of spending millions on new tech to increase some arbitrary quota, how about spending a few million dollars to hunt down good store associates and train them to service a variety of consumers from young to old. I’m fond of tech, but sometimes retailers and third-party service providers forget that tech can’t solve everything. Sometimes good old-fashioned customer service and good old-fashioned retailing fundamentals are all that’s needed.

On the other hand, there may be a flip side to this tech: Those smart retailers that forgo such wrong-headed tech will immediately differentiate their stores and win customers who enjoy a more pleasurable shopping experience.

While checking out in an express lane in a Raley’s supermarket recently, I remarked to the (middle-aged) checker that she seemed unhappy. “I don’t like these lanes,” she replied. “They expect us to work faster over here, but I like to work slower in the other lanes.” In my local Safeway, a young male checker tried to get away with cramming three bags of goods into a single paper sack. “Sorry,” he said, “but they’re making us work faster.” I waited while he re-bagged my stuff.

I’m more of a carrot guy than a stick guy. Well, to be candid, I like the carrot until it doesn’t work, and then become a stick proponent. Sticktoitiveness, I think they call it. (Trust me, it’s in the dictionary. I would never, ever coinify a word.) If a faster checkout pace can save a retailer $15,000 annually across 34 locations (Bob’s Stores), they should do something positive with that $441 per store! Create a bonus pool that rewards the best performers with a Big Mac and maybe a small order of fries. My goodness, what a savings! And all without alienating any customers, right? Right?

Hurrying checkers–hence, customers–is only a good idea to a point. If the touchy-feely retail consultant gurus are right, the checkout is often the only instance in which customers and stores interact on a personal basis. These consultants must hate “labor-waste elimination systems at checkout.” And yet, some of them work for the very companies offering this type of service. Makes you wonder, right? Right?

It is poor customer service. I have experienced this many times at Target–they suspend the sale, they complete the sale before you can sign then you must sign the paper, they do not always give you time for coupons, if the price is wrong they have often completed sale before you can point out and then you must go to customer service to get the difference.

I really don’t think this is as bad as some of the commentators above believe. We all know “what gets measured gets done.” It is possible to be friendly and still move things along. I watch the Costco folks do it about twice a month and they do it with consistency. Even the longest lines at Costco move quickly and I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait more then ten minutes. Costco customers have pretty well trained themselves to be ready, hand over their cards and coupons, and keep moving.

Not sure what system they use but my local Costco posts the metrics of the cashiers within view of the customers–they have something like number of customers processed per hour, along with the total transactions in dollars per hour, and perhaps one other measurement.

When used as part of an overall evaluation, these numbers can be useful. It’s when a particular cashier combines speed with a lack of friendliness that it can be a problem.

I’m a cashier for the company mentioned, and the reality is this: There is no reason you can’t be fast, accurate AND customer-centric. You can chat and ask appropriate questions while moving items across the scanner and bagging. You can load the cart while the customer is digging out that last penny. It’s called multitasking.

There are cashiers in my store that I won’t go to, and who guests have complained to me about, because their internal sense of rhythm and speed is too slow; they should not be cashiers, but perhaps work as greeters instead. I’m not naturally a “fast” person. I’m middle-aged now, but in my youth, I had three jobs where bosses told me I did good work, but that I had to pick up the pace. And there are times when I am still faster than my younger co-workers.

Personal experience–my wife was a cashier at a large chain using such software. Awful for her until a friend taught her the cheat button that temporarily turned off the timer. Awful for the customers, who she had to rush through the check-out lane, even to the point of not being able to wish them happy holidays.

The problem may not have been the software per se, but the rules under which the timers operate. With no flexibility for a slow customer or a bad card or a bad card read, she would be penalized for customer actions that were not under her control.

Once again, a company has found a way to profit by taking the most important element a business has, the human one, and decompiling it into a data stream to be analyzed. Have these stores forgotten that each cashier is in fact the “face” of their company? I cannot believe there isn’t another way to increase cashier productivity without stressing them out to the point that it affects their interaction with customers.

Sorry, but I can’t write any more as I have reached my allocated 4 minute RetailWire response time.

The article notes that “Meijer has implemented the OWO system, which dates back to systems that helped manufacturers engineer labor standards” There is a second part to those studies. It is called the Hawthorne Effect. What observers discover was that not only did the test groups improve their outputs but so did the control groups. It was discovered that much of the improvement was not in the system but in the fact that someone was paying attention to the workers.

My personal experience mirrors those of my colleagues above. I found that most of the delays at checkout are caused by the customer and not by the cashier. Where is the merchant in these retailers’ decision making? The last person a customer comes in contact with before the customer leaves the store is the cashier. In many cases, 100% of the customer’s human interaction with the retailer is with the cashier. Why, oh, why would a retailer choose to trade off a pleasant customer experience for a few seconds of time?

If a retailer wants to reduce cashier costs, invest in self-service check out. With self-service checkout and friendly cashiers, the retailer wins both ways.

I have to believe this isn’t the whole story. It is beyond me that an experienced and intelligent retail operator would risk customer experience for seconds at the check out.

I found the WSJ article to be shallow and pandering, and RSR sent a letter to the WSJ detailing why. Of COURSE retailers use these techniques–and have, for a very long time. This isn’t new, and it’s not revolutionary. Yes, it’s very possible that some retailers, or more likely some stores within a retail chain, have gone to the extreme. But that’s what all those other measures are in place for–it’s great that your cashier throughput is maximized, but then how is that store manager going to feel (and what will his or her bonus look like) when their customer satisfaction scores start dropping? When impulse sales fall through the floor? When turnover increases and sales fall? I really can’t imagine any large retailer out there today that could truly be that short-sighted.

It’s never an issue delineated in black and white–the evil retailer versus the beleaguered employee (any more than the poisonous employee versus the altruistic retailer). Productivity tools can be of tremendous benefit to retailers, but it has to be managed against the number one over-riding objective: the customer experience. That’s what makes applying efficiency objectives to the service industry–but if you balance against the customer experience, every stakeholder (retailer, employee, and customer) can benefit.

When I was a supermarket cashier as a kid, we once had a manager who focused on speed above all else. A co-worker who was very fast (but not friendly or accurate, it turned out) got lots of extra hours because of his speed of output, but lines would form at registers of slower cashiers who didn’t want to be checked out by him. As one of the “slower” ones, I recall being hounded to speed it up. I also vividly recall the day when, in haste, I forgot to give the local nuns their green stamps for their big weekly purchase. Raised Baptist, I had no idea what to call a nun, and thought “Sister” would be criminally inappropriate if you weren’t Catholic. Flustered, and knowing I was losing “valuable time,” I dialed out my green stamps and chased them out the door, yelling, “HEY, NUNS!”

This is a prime example of why retailers fail. Any gimmick is viewed as a silver bullet and adopted because it doesn’t require management to do any work. A quick fix! Well you better find out first what’s really broken.

I don’t think the cashier is defective here. Everyone doesn’t work at the same speed. If you need more throughput on the front end then do a better job of scheduling cashiers or put in automated checkouts like my local supermarket did. If retailers would just realize that it’s a people business and treat their employees and customers with some respect and actually run their business in a manner that truly cares about both, then these problems would never arise. Do you see these complaints about Publix or Nordstrom? If you don’t then that means that the problem lies with the retailer, not the employees and the customers. Fix the problem and the symptoms go away.

This represents a singularly myopic perspective that will continue to contribute to the downfall of brick and mortar retailing: cost cutting without regard to the customer (and customer experience).

There is no way to look at a single component of retail operations, particularly “front of the store,” without considering the broader causes and effects. More automation for the sake of cost cutting will only hasten brick and mortar merchants being (better) replaced by Amazon…particularly as Amazon comes closer to real time fulfillment.

Used wrong, something like this could be a disaster for a store. Employees need to work efficiently because they want to. If a store (or any business) isn’t hiring and managing with this assumption, its life will be short. It not only hurts employees and customers but managers, who are forced to think in very time consuming detail about something that saves little.

But used correctly, they could help. Let cashiers use the systems themselves and keep the information private, for their own benefit, to become better employees.

While I agree that there may be some value for a large chain with significant number of checkout lanes at each location to utilize employee productivity tools, they have no place in a small format retailer. Our focus is specialty retail, most specifically convenience stores. In our industry and other specialty retail, the interaction between the customer and the sales associate can make or break a location.

Experience has shown that customer service (friendly employees) ranks very high on the list of reasons people select one store over another. Typically, customers have an average of three alternatives for a convenience store. Location is generally the principle driver for their choice but in my experience, a great location with poor customer service soon finds its customer base migrating elsewhere.

It is true that people want to get in and out quickly (especially in a c-store), but in numerous surveys we have conducted, customers also want someone who treats them like a person. That may not be possible if the clerk is “on the clock.”

I read the article about Meijer instituting the system and was disappointed to hear that this is how they spur employees on to be more efficient. The times I have been in their stores and bought something, I found the checkout personnel to be disconnected with the customer and their job. This is where the inefficiency is; acting like they don’t want to be there. Compare that with Trader Joe’s clerks, who for a time were very efficient even without scanners. They talk to every customer and move pretty quickly. The only limitation is the small number of checkouts due to the relatively small size of the stores.

Since when has the customer a part on a factory floor, to be fitted into the correct hole and to be processed as quickly as possible in order to optimize production? Customers are people; they will let you know if they want a conversation at the till or just would like to get in and out whith the least amount of fuss. Your article says that a company saves 15k a year by the implementation of this. How much do they lose in good will? Again, the head office trying to find work for itself in order to justify its existence. Boy I would have liked to been at the presentation where they said that by implementing this they would save 15k!!!…bet there was silence in the room.