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'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240111-it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-of-self-checkout-technology

Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.

'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology::Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.

22 comments

reddig33

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The failure is in over-relying on it. It’s designed for convenience to replace express lanes. But when you funnel the entire checkout system to a handful of self serve registers, it doesn’t work.

eek2121

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The walmart closest to me only had self checkout and got rid of ALL of their cashier lanes. They had 4 times ad many self checkouts. That lasted for a few months. It went from taking 5-10 minutes in checkout to 45 minutes or more. Why? Untrained people are slow and the software is terrible. In addition, Shoplifting went through the roof.

They finally added cashier lanes back in. No idea if it was complaints or dropping revenue that caused the reversal.

Evilcoleslaw

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They work fine for me. The only time I've had to ask for assistance is for an age check or once when I double scanned something. But then I'm not a blithering idiot and I know to look at the PLU sticker on produce and that you can usually just punch in the UPC code if an item won't scan correctly. I'd much rather do it myself than have to make awkward small talk with a cashier. And standing in lines? You'd be standing in line waiting for a cashier too.

On the retailer side, they're either going to have to accept the increased theft rate or they're going to have to go back to paying cashiers. That's just the way it is -- they can't have their cake and eat it too in that regard.

sushibowl

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I don't get this article, it's clearly got a bone to pick with self-checkout and seems to be contradicting itself in the process:

Consumers want this technology to work, and welcomed it with open arms. [...] In a 2021 survey of 1,000 American shoppers, 60% of consumers said they prefer to use self-checkout over a staffed checkout aisle when given the choice

Okay, so even given the myriad of poor implementations out there, a majority of people prefer it. But then at the end:

Simply, "customers hate it".

Oh really? Because your quoted survey seems to say the opposite. And then there's stuff like this:

In addition to shrink concerns, experts say another failure of self-checkout technology is that, in many cases, it simply doesn't lead to the cost savings businesses hoped for. Just as Dollar General appears poised to add more employees to its check-out areas, presumably increasing staffing costs, other companies have done the same.

This is too light on data. Even a luxurious 1 cashier per 2 self-checkout stations will result in large cost savings for a business where employee costs are a significant fraction of total expenses. Especially in low margin businesses like grocery stores, removing even small amounts of overhead makes a big difference. Just because stores are adding a few employees back, doesn't mean cost-savings are completely negated.

Despite self-checkout kiosks becoming ubiquitous throughout the past decade or so, the US still has more than 3.3 million cashiers working around the nation, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Surprise, a large nation did not completely get rid of cashiers! The number is meaningless without more context: did the number of cashiers go down? What about average cashiers per store? Where is the data?

My point is, maybe companies just went too hard on the cost-cutting and are trying to find the right balance. What is the best ratio of self-checkout to classic cashier checkout? What is the right amount of self-checkout assistants? How do we make checking out yourself a good user experience? All of these things are still being experimented with. What does seem to be clear is that self-checkout has become near ubiquitous, and therefore it is most certainly not a "spectacular failure" by any definition.

lovesickoyster

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ugh... self checkout here in switzerland works like a dream - it's not the self checkout idea that's problematic, it's the customers.

Nexz

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I concur, in the Netherlands they are rarely ‘full’. Had to wait a couple of minutes during the Christmas craziness, but that about sums up my waiting time at self-checkouts.

lovesickoyster

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I think in the last 5 or so years of using them exclusively I only had to wait in line once due to 3/6 of them being unavailable because of maintainance - and that was maybe 3 minutes tops.

Sanctus

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Turns out an increasingly advanced society becomes increasingly confusing to your populace when education is disregarded.

SmashingSquid

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Most self checkouts in the US work fine for me too. The only issue I ever have is when stores have the weight sensor in the bagging area turned on and it does the stupid unexpected item in bagging area crap. There is one model that I won’t touch when I see it though because it was slow as hell even when it was new.

candybrie

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Do yours freak out when you put your re-usable bags in the bagging area even when you tell it you're using 4 of your own bags? Or have two barcodes on packages and if the wrong one scans (either because you aren't sure which needs to be scanned or because they're next to each other and you don't get a gun), you need a cashier to override? Or have weight sensors that are just wrong about how much items should weigh? Or only have enough room for like 2 bags of groceries but it isn't ok to take any out of the bagging area?

I don't think it's just customers.

lovesickoyster

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Never really had any problems.

Do yours freak out when you put your re-usable bags in the bagging area even when you tell it you're using 4 of your own bags?

no weight sensors, and where there are, you can put the bags on the platform, wait for like 20 seconds for it to recognize them and continue with the scanning.

Or have two barcodes on packages and if the wrong one scans (either because you aren't sure which needs to be scanned or because they're next to each other and you don't get a gun), you need a cashier to override?

never had that happen but this is the store's problem and I'm guessing doesn't happen all that often - neither the fault of the machine nor the customer.

Or have weight sensors that are just wrong about how much items should weigh?

never experienced that either with the ones that do have weight sensors.

Or only have enough room for like 2 bags of groceries but it isn't ok to take any out of the bagging area?

the ones with weight sensors have like a 1m*1m platform, there's plenty of room for like 3-4 full bags.

Revan343

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Sounds like you guys just have better self-checkouts than we do

lovesickoyster

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looks like the majority of the complains are related to the weight sensors, and you can't scrap those if you have people stealing - that does just not happen here in any significant amount.

Revan343

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Eh. The weight sensors don't seem to be doing much to prevent stealing, companies are still complaining about it; they just make the things a pain in the ass to use

BearOfaTime

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Ah yes, typical technical folk, blame the user for bad design.

If your target audience can't use what you've designed, it's the fault of the designer, not the user.

I say this as having been in IT for 30+ years now. This argument is always presented by juniors, because their design "couldn't possibly be wrong, the users are just doing it wrong".

UI needs to be intuitive and obvious. Don't blame the user if you failed at this.

Edit: Hahahaha the downvotes! Please, send me your resumes, so we know who not to hire! Hahahahaja

lovesickoyster

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Like I said, the same self-checkout machines work wonderfully in switzerland. 🤷‍♂️

SmashingSquid

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There are many people who can’t grasp anything technology related. I’ve seen people tapping a can against the scanner instead of scanning the barcode and getting mad it didn’t work. UIs on most self checkouts these days are the same with different branding and they work well.

It is impossible to make something everyone can use when people let their brains shut off any time they have to use a machine.

knotthatone

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You're not wrong, but it's not just the UI on the kiosk, it's the whole checkout process. A trained cashier on a real checkout line is much faster because the machine isn't nerfed and trying to hold their hand while preventing them from stealing. The real problem is the stores are trying to shift the labor onto the customer but the customer isn't getting much benefit for the effort nor has any motivation to be particularly honest in light of having this chore thrown in their lap.

I don't think they can redesign the UI to overcome that. It's not really a UI problem, it's a conflict of interests problem and they're not going to solve that unless they completely redesign the checkout process. The little Amazon convenience stores that know what you have as you shop seem like a better approach, but I'm guessing they're not all they're cracked up to be since they haven't seemed to catch on that much.

CADmonkey

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I don't know why you are being downvoted, must be a bunch of people wanting to defend a shitty UI.

Because you're right, a self checkout shouldn't require technical knowledge to use.

coffinwood

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Self-checkout and self-scanning are great when done right.

I only need to pack my groceries into my shopping crate once with the hand scanner. Or when buying only a few items, I skip the lines and scan them myself, pay with my phone, done.

terminhell

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Depends on how much I have to be scanned. If it's a handful of things vs an entire cart full of groceries. At this point I don't have an issue generally with self checkouts as a replacement for express lanes. But I refuse to waste mine and everyone behind me time with 100+ grocery haul. I've been a cashier before. I know how to be fairly efficient at self checkout. But I also know being able to put all my items on a conveyor belt while a trained cashier scans and bags is just faster.

Jonna

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I avoid them if I can. If the store wants me to work for them, they can pay me. If they don't have any available human checkers, I will pay myself by accidentally not charging some of the items. I have left stores and attempt to tell store managers why.

If we had a sane economic system where jobless folks still got their needs met, I'd be all for automation. But we don't. So every time we allow the corporations to profit with less human workers, we are fucking over our fellow humans.