Self Checkout Registers

Self check out registers are awesome, except when they don't work. So far I have used them at four retailers:

* Home Depot
* Super Stop & Shop
* Shaw's
* IKEA

The first two, Home Depot and Super Stop & Shop, got theirs to work. It is possible that they are using the best of breed vendor. Anyone know who it is? The second two, don't seem to have gotten it right.

Supermarkets have it tough. Most of the time, the stores are overcrowded and chaotic. Noone really wants to be there - neither customer, cashier or clerk, or even bagger. To boot, the products are complex, perishable, fragile, large, and inexpensive, all factors which make the food retail business a competitive one. It is components like a self checkout register that can give a general food retailer that competitive edge.

Here are a few tips to make sure your self checkout register is working properly:
* Make sure it can read coupons
* Make sure there is a staff member on hand to help confused customers or registers
* Fix "out-of-order" registers immediately - even if it stops accepting cash, credit, or debit
* Make one of the registers an express, less than 12 items aisle
* Perhaps even give customers an incentive to use the self checkout
* Make sure the scale system does not overpower basic logic and procedure

That last tip regarding the scale system needs a little more explanation than the others. Most self checkout systems attempt to prevent fraud by weighing the scanned item as they are placed into the bagging area, to make sure that customers don't scan one item and take another. This safety feature is often the cause of a disastrous checkout. What happens is the machine repeatedly states "item removed from bagging area", or "please place your item in the bagging area before scanning more items". Confused customers are ready to give up as they try to place and return their scanned items into the bagging area to their best capabilities. Most often, a store employee will come over and simply override the system. I've seen this happen quite a lot, and its never prevented any fraud.

RFID (radio frequency identification) tags will help solve this problem, but they still won't be available cheap enough to put on every box of cereal for some time now. Until then, I'll only use the self checkout register when I have a clean and simple transaction that I know will go through smoothly and quickly.