Have you ever gone shopping and waited in line to pay just to be greeted by a machine rather than a person? Things move a little faster and make life a little easier when you’re in charge of scanning every item and swiping your credit card, especially when you’re only picking up a few things.
But not everyone enjoys having to scan all of their belongings and check themselves out. Additionally, even with these self-checkout lanes, lineups might still form.
Walmart came up with a means to completely cut out lineups while allowing customers to still check themselves out. With their Scan & Go technology, Walmart is now trying to change that and make checking out even easier for customers.
The “Scan and Go” technology, which allows consumers to scan products as they move through the store and then pay with their phones when they’re done, then, for security reasons, they pass through a Mobile Express lane at the entrance of Walmart stores.
The company has expanded its Scan & Go test to an additional 100 stores. Three of those stores are in the Tampa Bay area–Brooksville, Auburndale, and Lake Wales.
“With the introduction of new technology in our stores like Scan & Go and Pickup Towers, we are giving even more customers a quick, simple and easy shopping experience, and that’s really what they’ve been asking for,” said Ray Korsch, a market manager for Walmart in Polk County. “We’re always looking for new ways to help our customers save time, and these innovations are just the latest examples of how we continue to invest in our stores and bring greater convenience to customers right here in Central Florida. This especially rings true here in Polk County where just last year we invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a new eCommerce Fulfillment Center in Davenport.”
The justification for deploying this kind of technology was that modern consumers demand a quick and simple shopping experience and a simple method to enter and exit the business without any hassle or fuss.
However, Customers don’t seem to have been happy about the new technology that replaced cashiers. In fact, it might have done them damage and strengthened Walmart’s already negative reputation for poor customer service.
Walmart has always scored quite poorly when it comes to customer satisfaction, but right now they’re even worse, and the self-use machines could be to blame.
From 2016 to 2017, Walmart’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) score decreased from 72 to 71, indicating a decline in the quality of the goods and services that American consumers receive from several big departments and discount shops. They are hence near the bottom of the list, slightly behind Sears.
Walmart (MCAW) director, Randy Parraz said, “It took Walmart almost a year to figure out what the rest of us already know: you can’t convince customers to do the job of a cashier just because you don’t want to pay for the work, especially when eliminating cashiers doesn’t result in more convenient shopping.”
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Sources: Awm, Newsely, Bizjournals
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