Rule Number One: The customer is always right.
Rule Number Two: In the event the customer is not right, refer to Rule Number One.
These rules used to be among the first taught to new employees. The truth is the customer isn’t always right and you often have to revert to rule number two. If you’ve ever lived, worked, breathed retail you know that sometimes the customer just gets it wrong. Not wrong in what they want, just wrong in what you are able to give. Maybe there are restrictions. Perhaps Uncle Sam (and I mean the US Government, not Sam Walton) says you have to do it a certain way. Maybe the decision would require an executive approval. Maybe what they want isn’t really something that is good for them. Your job is to come to a conclusion which makes the customer right or at least satisfied. Still, the idea behind the rules are important, and a good company adapts to the needs of the customer, not the other way around.
Yet, more and more in today’s market we see retailers trying to force the customer to conform to what is best for the retailer rather than adapting to the wants and needs of the customer. Oh, to be sure, they’d never admit it. They always mask it with an effort in improved customer satisfaction. They would say they are just striving to provide a more convenient atmosphere or they are trying to make the shopping experience more customer friendly.
How about when they juggle everything around and you waste twenty minutes trying to find it because, of course, there are rarely any employees on the sales floor to help you anymore? Was that for you? Or was that for them? Did it make your shopping experience more convenient? Or did it just expose you to more stuff to buy? People are creatures of habit. We’d all be happier if the things we buy on a regular basis never moved, and we could go straight to what we wanted every time. But that creates stagnant shelves, it exposes certain items and hides others, and it certainly doesn’t get you looking at stuff you didn’t intend to buy. No, those moves, along with nearly all others, are designed to make their companies more profitable and reduce their biggest cost — labor.
When it comes to labor, money is certainly a big factor, but the costs go deeper. The obvious costs are in the price a company has to pay to their employees to perform their tasks. Other costs are lack of productivity, dissatisfied customers, and disruption to operation. When an employee doesn’t show up for work, it still costs the company. The employee’s absence may be covered by personal time or sick pay. Additionally, they may have to pay another employee to come in and cover the absence. The company pays for that absence in other ways as well, such as in reduced customer service (since they are shorthanded) or in lack of productivity (because others are pulled off task to cover). These issues result in a disruption of business, reduced morale, and an inability to function.
Labor is by far the most expensive part of doing business and when a company finds a way to get around that, the customers be damned. Aside from advancements that allow automation or robots to assume roles traditionally held by employees, companies have found they can save labor costs by requiring their customers to assume part of the burden of labor. Years ago, it was the carry out service which was tendered to the customer, going much the way of full service gas stations. Then cart boy who gathered carts all day was replaced by cart racks in the parking lot. The customers put carts in the rack and now instead of having someone gather them all the time, they send a cashier out to gather them from the rack. Today, it’s the cashiers. Nearly every large (and even medium) sized retailer has invested in the idea of self-checkouts, some even giving self-checkouts equal space with manned registers or sometimes more space than manned registers.
The self-checkout craze has taken over, and if we were simply talking about customer convenience, it would be a great asset. This is, of course, how retailers justify the presence of the do-it-yourself machines. Certainly for those customers who have a limited number of items, it often is more convenient to scan and go, but for those customers with large purchases, the elderly, the handicapped, or those who just don’t want to mess with it, self-checkouts are far from convenient. Anyone with eyes can tell just how convenient customers feel self-checkouts are by the line at the single register with a cashier. When customers stand stubbornly in that one single line as the Customer Service Manager tries to coax people over to the self-checkouts or even takes them to the self-checkout and scans it herself, it should be a pretty good indication that they don’t like them, or at least that they don’t want to use them for large purchases. The problem is that the corporate office rarely wants to be wrong. In fact, they often set up parameters to assure that they can’t be wrong.
It is an almost 100% guarantee that your favorite retailer tracks the usage of those self-checkout registers. They monitor them to make sure they are being used and when they aren’t being used, they don’t like it. So if customers aren’t happy with using a self-checkout, or they aren’t comfortable using them, the usage percent goes down, and again, the home office — those elite, “we know our customers better than the shill in the store people” — don’t like to be wrong. So what do they do? They set up a situation where they are right, all the time. They limit the store to the number of regular registers which are allowed to be open. They train their people to send customers to the self-checkouts. They tell their people to ignore everything they have taught them about listening to the customer and responding to the customer’s needs or desires. They force your local store to force you into using the machines and doing the work yourself. Usage goes up, so that MUST be what the customers want.
And what do the customers do? They eventually conform, or at least a lot of them do. To be sure, self-checkouts can be a convenience. They should be offered. They could even be encouraged if done right. Do you realize that you pay just as much for your merchandise if you check it out yourself (saving the retailer labor costs) as you do if someone else checks it out for you? WHY? Why is it that if you save them labor costs that they don’t pass that savings directly on to you? Oh, they’ll say they are passing it on to you in lower prices, but those lower prices go to the people who are standing in the line of the single cashier as well. If retailers are truly offering convenience, if they just want to help customers get in and out of the stores more quickly, then why don’t they encourage that usage by offering you a discount for checking yourself out? Because it isn’t about those things they tell you; it just about saving them money and adding to their bottom line.
Can you imagine going to a restaurant and being asked to go back to the kitchen and fix your own food? I’m sure there is some niche restaurant that sells such a crazy idea and there are some individuals who believe it is eclectic to visit such a restaurant, but most of us would find it absurd. If you wanted to cook your own food, why would you go out in the first place? And if you wanted to check yourself out, you could do it online. This idea of using customer labor to save the retailer labor costs is just as absurd. Self-checkouts should be there for when you want to use it, not because they don’t want to pay a cashier.
My previous retail management experienced with a major retail company gave me the inside look at the efforts behind self-checkouts. I experienced, first hand, the concept that reducing the number of cashiers would force customers to use the DIY registers. My regular visits to a national grocery chain store (and a competitor to my former employer) as a customer, reinforced these beliefs by showing me that the grocery chain subscribes to the same sort of corporate mindset. Self-checkouts, of course, aren’t the only place the HO doesn’t want to be wrong. Time after time, I saw tools which were developed to help with convenience or efficiency turned into weapons used to force the right answer.
I’ve made a decision. I’m not giving them free labor any more. I will stand in a line ten deep. I will embarrass them with lines and empty registers. I will no longer be part of the problem. I will add to discomfort at the front end until they feel compelled to bring up additional cashiers. It is time for customers to remind retailers who is in control. You vote for your favorite retailer with your dollars and your continued support. You the customer are supposed to be the most important element in a retailer’s life. I believe it’s time they were reminded.
So join the revolution! Customers rebel! Resist! Insist that retailers open more registers. Insist that if you save the company money, you get some of that savings! Hold your ground and hold your opportunity for self-checkout for when You choose to use it, not when they want to force you to use it. Or at least recognize that what they do is not always for the benefit of the customer. If you enjoy using the self-checkouts, use them. Hey, they already have you bagging and loading your own merchandise, gathering your own carts, searching around the store with no employee in sight for that one elusive item, and now checking yourself out — maybe you should just work for them.
