While many large retailers are reducing self-service checkout lanes, a local grocery store is working to maintain a balance between the convenience of self-service registers and personalized customer service.
Gerrity’s The Fresh Grocer, which has been owned and operated by the Fasula family for over 40 years, has 10 stores in Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Lehigh counties.
The supermarket started installing self-service checkouts in about half of its lanes 15 years ago and added the technology to the rest of the stores just last year.
Co-owner Joe Fasula stated, “Some customers may find it hard to believe, but there is a group of customers who prefer the self-checkout. While older customers may not like them, younger customers do. It's a big factor for us as we aim to offer customers what they want.”
Fesula noted that as the younger generation grows, the use of self-service machines has increased.
Fesula mentioned, “I’ve even been told by various people, not just the younger generation, that they won’t go anywhere without a self-checkout.”
The advent of machines
The first self-checkout machine was introduced in Atlanta-area Kroger grocery stores in 1986, and since then, the technology has rapidly changed our shopping experience.
While promising convenience and reduced wait times, self-checkouts also allowed companies to lower labor costs.
Citing a recent study from shopper intelligence firm Catalina, the number of self-service checkouts in the U.S. has risen by 10% in the last five years and now represents 38% of register lanes.
Although self-service checkouts have become a regular part of our shopping routine, many large retailers in recent years have begun to reconsider their self-service approach due to increased worries about machine malfunctions, long wait times, and loss of inventory due to theft or scanning errors.
Late last year, Target announced that it was limiting items in self-checkouts to 10 or fewer in a few stores, while Dollar General, in its quarterly earnings call, admitted that it had “relied too much” on self-checkout and that the DIY technology was not a replacement for personalized customer service.
Maintaining a balance
For Gerrity’s, creating a positive customer experience involves finding a middle ground between customers who are satisfied with self-checkout and prefer minimal personal interaction, and those who desire a more personalized touch.
Therefore, offering the choice of either a traditional register or self-service is crucial.
Fesula explained, “We prioritize hometown service above all else. That's the kind of company we are. As a family-owned, local business, we want to ensure that we provide the option of one-on-one service for our customers.”
The data seems to back up this idea.
A new examination by experts at Drexel University printed in the Journal of Business Research discovered that traditional cash registers had a positive impact on customer allegiance.
Traditional cash registers are also useful when customers have large orders, although Fesula mentioned that many of the self-service checkouts at Gerrity’s have conveyor belts, which make even larger orders easier to ring up and bag.
Fesula doesn’t deny there are problems with self-serve registers, but in his experience with them, he “wouldn’t say (the problems) were significant.”
“There’s no doubt that there’s a risk that things could get misrung up or that people may try to subvert the system, and we are always mindful of that, and we train our cashiers to monitor that and look for it,” he said.
A Convenience turned into necessity
Self-serve registers proved life-saving on many occasions, Fesula explained, especially during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when it was very difficult to maintain workers, and because people were desperate for a system that didn’t require prolonged exposure to others.
“There has actually been times where, if we didn’t have self checkouts, we would not have been able to properly serve our customers. Whether it be call offs or just being short staffed, or if there’s an influx of business due to a snow storm that you really can’t scale up your help for,”said Fesula.
Paul Bedmar, 86, of Dallas, prefers to use traditional registers, but enjoys having the option to use self-serve if he wants to.
“When they’re busy, the self-serve comes in handy,” he said.
Ryley Phillips, 25, of Kingston, always uses the self-serve because she normally has smaller orders, but feels the technology “could be better.”
“It is annoying when it’s like, ‘Please take the item out of the bagging area,’” Phillips said, imitating the machine’s automated voice.
“I get frustrated, and I can definitely see the older generation getting frustrated if there are issues or they prefer someone hands on,” Phillips said.
While the machines may be unreliable sometimes, Phillips still prefers them over traditional registers, especially when the store is crowded.
“If there’s 30 people in line, you want to get in and get out,” she said.
Fesula is optimistic that recent technological advances like Artificial Intelligence will help address some of these issues and enhance accuracy and the overall customer experience.
“I think it’s going to streamline the process for everybody involved,” he said.
