Sometimes customers see value in activities that managers view as unimportant.
There was a news story on the radio today saying supermarkets are starting to do away with the automatic checkout stations. Why? They listed a number of down sides such as
- Initial cost of the machines around $20K
- The machines need constant maintenance—more than expected, so is expensive
- Customers find them frustrating to use because they often have a question and no one is there to help
- “Forgetting” to scan the prices of some items has been an issue
- Only 20% of customers use them
The advantages of the automated checkout machines had seemed to be so clear that they were a “no-brainer”:
- Replace recurring wage and benefit costs with fixed lower costs
I am not sure what other advantages were expected. You get detailed record-keeping either way.
More surprising was what they found when they asked why so few people use the automatic checkouts. Statements like “Everyone here is so courteous—I just like buying from a real person” and “They pack the groceries in the bag better than I can do it” came up. I’ll admit I am part of the 80% that does not use them. I expect such things to be a hassle to use, and for some products it’s worth fighting my way through that to get the benefits. But the automated checkout machines don’t offer me a compelling enough benefit.
I can picture the sales pitch that the supermarkets heard from the checkout machine suppliers. If anyone had tried to say “but lots of customers would rather buy from a real person” how could they have made that case? How could they put a monetary value on it that could compare to the difference in hard numbers between wages saved and prices for initial installation and ongoing maintenance?
There is an underlying assumption that a cashier’s job is only to ring up the prices and nothing more. At least nothing more that has to be taken into account. But from lean thinking we hear the central idea “Let value—in the eyes of the customer—flow unimpeded from customer need identified to customer use.”
Here is a case where the customer is seeing far more value in those ancillary parts of a cashier’s job than the grocery store’s managers did. Customers clearly valued getting prompt answers to questions, having their things bagged, and even just a simple verbal exchange.
Could the store managers have done something differently? I’m tempted to point out that customers were not asking for automatic checkout machines. But that would imply that managers ought to just sit and wait to be told exactly how to run the business by customers. That’s not right either. Apple didn’t sit and wait for people to tell them to make an iPad—they correctly read the signs for what their customers wanted. Not just wanted but would actually use.
Food store managers probably thought the machines would give faster service without adding as much cost as hiring more people. It’s their job to find better ways to serve their customers. They have to take the best information they have and work from that.
The real question is how to know when there is likely more to the picture than you see, and how can you try out a possible pathway without having to commit big resources to it before you really understand the dynamics? So it’s more than just using the best information you have. You need to unearth new information that helps you know what customers really value. This is what is meant by “focusing on the customer”.
