Almost three quarters of consumers now want – and expect – to use self-service options in store, the IBM Institute for Business value reports. Whether it’s a touchscreen ordering kiosk or a self-checkout, the technology is now widely available across the retail sector, and businesses are moving towards getting their customers to handle more of the shopping transaction themselves. For most, this setup leads to shorter queues, faster checkouts and reduced labor costs. Yet, while some like European fashion retailer Zara and US grocery chain Kroger are scaling up the number of self-checkout kiosks in their stores, others (like UK supermarket Booths or American grocery chain Safeway) are removing them altogether in favor of a more traditional, human checkout experience.
In the same way that retailers are still navigating the delicate balance between their physical and online presence, they’re also reviewing their approach to self-service. For some that involves a shift in strategy – Walmart and Target have both recently limited their self-checkout lanes to combat shrink. Plenty more are increasing their reliance on the technology, even opting for a fully automated, self-checkout experience.
Here, we weigh up some of the pros and cons of self-service technology and why it may, or may not, make sense for your retail business.
The pros of self-service in retail
At Uniqlo and Decathlon self-checkout tills, consumers don’t need to scan barcodes on every item. They simply put everything they want to purchase into the self-checkout machine’s container and it all scans automatically. They don’t even need to wait for a store employee to remove security tags for them. They can do that for themselves too. It’s a popular experience that consumers love, for three main reasons:
- Convenience and speed: More and more consumers choose to bypass traditional checkout queues in favor of quickly scanning, bagging and paying for their purchases themselves. Around 85% of customers believe that self-checkout is faster, according to Forbes.
- Increased efficiency: Many larger retailers turn to self-checkout technology as a way of managing the wage bill, optimizing labor and increasing efficiency. In the UK, clothing and food retailer M&S made the decision to roll out hundreds of self-service tills as part of a wider cost-cutting drive to save £150 million (€175 million) across the business.
- Reduced queues: Retailers can typically fit more self-checkout terminals in a given space compared to manned tills, meaning they can serve more customers at once and avoid one of consumers’ greatest frustrations – long lines.
The cons of self-service in retail
In the UK, supermarket chain Booths decided to remove self-checkouts from all but two of its stores. It said that its customers found the technology unreliable and impersonal, and that staff delivered a better customer experience.
- Missed social interaction: No matter what self-service technology you invest in, some customers will always prefer to deal with a human instead. According to a survey by Raydiant, one in five consumers desire the human interaction that a cashier provides and prefer not to use a self-checkout kiosk.
- Increased shrinkage: Whether customers make an honest error or intentionally steal, retailers run the risk of making more losses from self-checkouts compared to traditional cashiers.
- Customer confusion and technical issues: “Unexpected item in bagging area.” Technical issues such as barcode reading errors, incorrectly registered items and weights, bagging challenges and payment troubles can affect customer satisfaction. Some customers also find it frustrating waiting for staff to visually ID them when buying restricted products like alcohol.
Flexible self-service and POS options for retailers
At LS Retail, we believe that retailers should be able to invest in the IT solutions that suit their business best. For some, implementing self-service checkouts and kiosks is the right move for their brand and customers, while others may prefer to remain with the traditional point of sale (POS). We can support you with both.
Our unified POS and business management software solutions enable retailers to deliver a truly connected shopping experience and all the features for click and collect, returns, self-scan and self-checkout. Within a centralized platform they can take advantage of:
- Traditional and mobile POS
- Connected data: self-service checkouts seamlessly integrate with the same backend so that product images, descriptions, offers and prices are consistent across all touchpoints, including manned and automated checkouts
- ScanPayGo app, which lets customers scan items as they shop and pay for them on the app
- Self-ordering at the café or deli, including kiosks and QR code scanning.
Our software is available as SaaS, so retailers that rely on LS Retail technology can always be sure they have access to all the latest features so they can keep up with current industry trends and deliver differentiating consumer experiences.
Contact us for more information about how you can seamlessly integrate a range of traditional and self-service solutions into your retail offering and establish yourself as a leader in this space.
