I regularly shop at a mid-sized branch of a large UK chain of stores.
For a long time, the store was rigged up with normal cashier run conveyors, a couple of express lanes & four SCOs.
There was occasionally a small queue, but on the whole things ran smoothly.
When I shop, even if I'm just getting a few items, I always use a small trolley (cart) as I have difficulty carrying a loaded basket. Once through the checkout I split my load between bags & backpack to even things out.
So, a couple of months ago i went to shop, and noticed that they'd installed more SCOs.. as in they'd ripped out all but 3 of the 10 - 12 cashier run checkouts and filled the space with SCOs. OK, may not have been so bad if some of them were the larger ones that could cope with a large shopping load, but they weren't.. they were all the small basket sized ones with a scale to place the items on once scanned; and positioned so it was awkward to use a trolley without having to place it in front of the unit & stretch over the trolley to scan stuff.
I avoided them at first, & carried on using the other checkouts which now had queues stretching halfway down the shop, but one day, I was in a rush & tried the SCO, struggled through, took note of all the unhappy staff trying to help people who really didn’t want to try & struggle through that area & on the way out commented to a supervisor, "please bring the conveyors back, that was the worst shopping experience I've had in here!"
Her reply was, "they’re being reinstalled, the amount of complaints we had has been staggering"
Three weeks later, they were back And apart from teething problems of the first morning when some of the registers decided not to work, things are running smoothly again from what I can see. I did talk to one of the cashiers who said they’d had an horrendous time and were worried about what was going to happen when everyone had started their Christmas shopping, I just replied that I would have shopped elsewhere. More than likely a lot of others would have too,
Nothing like corporate good ideas for losing customers eh?
Shoppers 1 Corporate 0
For a long time, the store was rigged up with normal cashier run conveyors, a couple of express lanes & four SCOs.
There was occasionally a small queue, but on the whole things ran smoothly.
When I shop, even if I'm just getting a few items, I always use a small trolley (cart) as I have difficulty carrying a loaded basket. Once through the checkout I split my load between bags & backpack to even things out.
So, a couple of months ago i went to shop, and noticed that they'd installed more SCOs.. as in they'd ripped out all but 3 of the 10 - 12 cashier run checkouts and filled the space with SCOs. OK, may not have been so bad if some of them were the larger ones that could cope with a large shopping load, but they weren't.. they were all the small basket sized ones with a scale to place the items on once scanned; and positioned so it was awkward to use a trolley without having to place it in front of the unit & stretch over the trolley to scan stuff.
I avoided them at first, & carried on using the other checkouts which now had queues stretching halfway down the shop, but one day, I was in a rush & tried the SCO, struggled through, took note of all the unhappy staff trying to help people who really didn’t want to try & struggle through that area & on the way out commented to a supervisor, "please bring the conveyors back, that was the worst shopping experience I've had in here!"
Her reply was, "they’re being reinstalled, the amount of complaints we had has been staggering"
Three weeks later, they were back And apart from teething problems of the first morning when some of the registers decided not to work, things are running smoothly again from what I can see. I did talk to one of the cashiers who said they’d had an horrendous time and were worried about what was going to happen when everyone had started their Christmas shopping, I just replied that I would have shopped elsewhere. More than likely a lot of others would have too,
Nothing like corporate good ideas for losing customers eh?
Shoppers 1 Corporate 0
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