With the rise of automation and companies trying to reduce costs in these tough financial times, customers are not always happy with the results. Machines have a lot of advantages, but at the end of the day humans need other humans and talking to a machine is just not the same.
Walmart is figuring this out the hard way. As part of its “store of the future” strategy, the company has been trying to figure out the best checkout method for its business model. In the past year new advanced anti-theft features have been implemented, some stores have done away with self-checkout kiosks, others only have them and others have a mix of both.
An additional layer of complexity is added when the Walmart+ program is factored in. In stores were there are self- checkout kiosks managers can assign a number of them to be available only for shoppers that belong to the members program.
Walmart+ allows shoppers to have a few perks — free shipping, grocery delivery, discounts on gas, and, the Scan & Go feature, all for $98 a year. Quite reasonable if you can afford the extra cash and will use the features. The one that is causing the most outrage is the Scan & Go feature, which lets subscribers with the Walmart app scan items in-store, add them to a virtual cart and generate a bar code that can be quickly scanned at checkout to pay.
When the Scan & Go feature is combined with the exclusive self-checkout kiosks for members, Walmart shoppers that are not affiliated see their checkout line grow while the members only lines are empty and feel like the retail giant is dismissing them for not being members or forcing them to pay extra to use self-checkout.
Walmart has denied this is true and has started it values all its clients, but for many, it comes a little too late and have abandoned the store. One X user wrote:
“I have finally convinced all of my family to quit shopping at @Walmart. That $98/year fee to use self-checkout made that conversation really easy (…) How about hiring some people and opening up some lanes,”
This user is not the only one expressing the need to add more cashiers or at least open more self-checkout kiosks. The checkout lines at Walmart have always been legendary, but all the new measures seem to have exacerbated the problem and with no solution in sight.
Statements are conflicting, but none of them positive, some shoppers state that at least 60% of self-checkouts at their stores are blocked off for Walmart+ members and they do this to save money, others say it is the antitheft measures that are driving them up the wall and that personnel has just been relocated from behind a cashier lane to hovering between customers.
“What’s the point of Walmart’s self-checkout when every register has an employee hovering next to it?” another customer wrote on X.
The sentiment was shared by a different user who stated “people hovering over you at all times. And now they have cameras and playback so if you mess up and scan something twice, they come over and watch the d*mn film before they remove it… then you need them to approve anything age-related (…) It takes 20 d*mn minutes to check out a cart of groceries. No thanks.”
The desired solution seems to be the reinstatement of cashiers to restore the flow of people: “At the #Walmart I was just at, you could have had an additional 6 actual cashier lanes if you took just 1 employee from the area,” is just one of the nicer comments on the matter.
Walmart spokesperson Josh Havens has stated that although they are trying new methods, the self-checkout kiosks are here to stay. Time will tell if the issue gets resolved.
Read Again https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiVGh0dHBzOi8vbGFncmFkYW9ubGluZS5jb20vZW4vZXZlcnl0aGluZy1jaGFuZ2VkLWluLXdhbG1hcnQtbmV3LXNlbGYtY2hlY2tvdXQta2lvc2tzL9IBAA?oc=5Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Suddenly, everything changed at Walmart: This is how the new self-checkout kiosks work - La Grada EN"
Post a Comment