My local Tesco has introduced a new way of serving customers today. It’s called Scan as you Shop.
Basically after registering your club card you pick up a hand-held scanner and do your shopping.
You pick your items, scan them and put them straight into your own bags in your trolley. Then when you’ve finished shopping you pay at the checkouts and you’re done.
Any snags?
- Well you need to be a club card holder so that will add you to their marketing database.
- Some products aren’t going to scan so you have to get a customer service assistant to help you at the end of your shop
- Items with security tags ditto
Any other problems? Well although stores generally won’t admit it it’s generally believed that there is more stolen through using self-serve checkouts (1 in 5 customers according to one source). This idea opens up even more opportunities for people to put items in their bag without paying for it.
In the instruction leaflet you can see that the first point they make is that you have to scan every item – to ensure an accurate till receipt. Of course that’s why they are telling you to do it. Don’t honest people i.e. most of us, understand that you have to scan everything you’re buying?
Then see the point about what they euphemistically call “service checks“. The leaflet explains that sometimes you will be randomly chosen to have some items re-scanned, maybe the whole trolley “to make sure they have all been scanned successfully“. Of course that’s the reason, and they haven’t been watching you on CCTV?
I admit I’m a Luddite when it comes to customer service. I like to have an interaction with a human being which is why I don’t use internet banking (part from its security flaws).
I‘ve posted on this before when they introduced the self-service checkouts and I still won’t use them.
I’ve complained several times to Tesco managers about the shutting of checkout lanes at peak times and all they say is that the shifts have finished and they’re doing the best they can. Well who organises the shift rosters if not the managers? Have they heard of twilight shifts?
A checkout assistant recently told me that although she was on a permanent contract all new staff were on zero hours contracts and if they refused two offers of work they were out. How can that attitude encourage staff to give of their best and provide a good customer service?
Tesco is losing market share, its customer service is getting worse (in store and on-line), and introducing more machines for shoppers to contend with is not the answer.
When Tesco tried to expand into the American market with Fresh & Easy my understanding is that it relied heavily on checkout machines. See where that got them, they lost a fortune (£1.2 Billion) before pulling out.
In USA today a year ago, reporting that decision, it was said that: “To adapt to changing U.K. tastes, Tesco, which started trading in 1924, is trying to create a better shopping experience: Staff will be more attentive, shelves better stocked and bigger stores will have space for customers to sit down and have a coffee or family-friendly restaurants”. The idea is to have customers enjoy their visits more and stay longer. The store is trying to re-engage with its customers, and do what Shore Capital’s Black described as a “lot more that makes it softer and warmer and friendlier.”
I don’t see any evidence of that and certainly not with this latest gimmick.
As Edmund Burke, a British philosopher, once said “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.“.
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