Self-checkouts, Self-service, and Customer Experience

This CNET News article caught my attention last week: Major grocery chain gets rid of self-checkout.

Here is the backstory: Albertsons, a major USA grocery chain has elected to remove the customer self-checkout lanes from its 217 stores.  From the original piece in the Seattle Times that first reported the Albertson's decision:

For Boise-based Albertsons, self-checkout no longer fits with the customer-service experience it wants, spokeswoman Christine Wilcox said.

"Our customers are our highest priority, and we want to provide them with an excellent experience from the time they park their car to when they leave," Wilcox said.

When Albertsons installed self-checkout lanes nearly a decade ago, "it was in response to a growing trend in retail for stores to be even more self-service" than ever before, she said. Albertsons is replacing the self-checkout lanes with regular lanes and opening more staffed lanes during peak shopping hours

A decade ago Albertsons, (and many other retailers, certainly), began to experiment with self-checkout lanes to provide more technically inclined and self-sufficient shoppers with what should have been a more efficient and simple check-out experience compared to the time-tested, (and kind of slow), 'place everything on the conveyor belt, make sure to plop down the little plastic item divider from the guy behind you, and answer a battery of questions from a sometimes too-perky check-out person'. 

'Did you find everything that you were looking for?'

'Do you want paper or plastic?'

'Do you want a bag for your milk?'

And so on.

So to avoid the process, particularly for shoppers with smaller orders, self-checkout lanes started to pop-up in all kinds of retail establishments. They were meant to solve (perceived) customer problems, offer some choices, and certainly shave some costs over time - stores would typically post one service rep to look after several of the self-checkout registers at a time, to assist customers who had issues scanning items, entering payments, and so on.

But as it turns out, most self-checkout experiences in grocery stores kind of stink. The machines are large, more complex than customers want them to be, and the thousands of items that a typical grocery store stocks often present customers and the technology with glitches and issues that eventually do require some assistance from the one service rep assigned to look after the process. Beyond that though, it is quite possible that using the self-checkout machines simply was not a good experience overall for most Albertsons customers, and most were willing to forego the potential time savings and awkward banter with the check-out person to use the traditional check-out process.

Lessons?

Pretty simple I think - implementing systems or imposing technological 'improvements' that exist primarily for the benefit of the service provider and not the customer can't survive indefinitely. Customers, be they the Albertsons shoppers, or the employees of your organization that are the consumers of your HR services and HR Technology solutions, eventually discern the value (or lack thereof), to themselves of whatever fantastic solutions you have developed and deployed.

I know what you're thinking, our Employee and Manager Self-Service solutions are fabulous - everyone just loves using them. We have had them in place for 10 years, and they save a gajillion dollars a year.

But ask yourself this question, if employees and managers had the choice, like Albertsons shoppers have had, to use the supposedly faster, better, modern 'self-service' option, or have their issues and concerns handled the slower, analog, behind-the-times 'old-fashioned' way, what do you think most of them would choose?

Are you really delivering a great solution and customer experience?

Postscript - I hate the self-checkout lane. Except when I get stuck behind someone that decides to pay for thier groceries using an out-of-state check. We really need to do something about those people.

Comments

[Christine Baese]

Is HR self service really to make things easier for the users / the self-servers? It seems like it is about making life easier or cheaper for the folks running HR. I'm not sure if it's works for them, and it hasn't for me as an employee, hiring manager, or just manager.

[Steve]

Thanks Christine - I see your point for sure. When self-service 'anything' is implemented eventually the customers learn whether or not they are truly getting service or just being served.

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[Annie]

Very informative, love the idea of passing massive things, you should contribute more on Facts of Life

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[frederickgragg]

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