Delivering a strong customer experience is fundamental in a retail landscape that keeps getting more crowded and competitive. But understanding the customer experience means understanding every stage of it, including the customer's sentiment toward each one. During a shopper's journey, the checkout process can make or break the entire experience. Long queues are a hassle for everyone involved, whether you're stuck waiting in one or causing it, and system errors, incorrect pricing, and slow service can all add up to an unpleasant checkout.
According to Statista, 66% of consumers worldwide have occasionally, frequently, or almost always experienced issues with long queues in-store. That can translate directly into abandoned purchases and a damaged brand image. Many retailers lean on discounts and sales to attract customers in-store, but those events tend to create the busiest periods for retailers, and not having the right point of sale (POS) solutions in place at exactly that moment can turn a promotion into a negative experience.
With consumer demands continuing to shift, retailers need a customer-focused POS experience. Between mobile POS and RFID-powered self-checkout, the technology to build one already exists. Now is the time for brands and retailers to put it to use.
The role of RFID-powered self-checkout in speeding up the checkout process
According to Statista, when given the choice between self-checkout and a cashier, 60% of consumers in the US still prefer a cashier. That preference is likely rooted in the underlying problems of older self-checkout systems, barcode scanning errors that force a store associate to step in anyway. Issues like these slowed the checkout process down enough that self-checkout became more of a hindrance than an advantage, delivering a poor experience instead of a faster one.
The latest generation of self-checkout systems has largely eliminated those problems. RFID-powered self-checkout no longer depends on customers manually scanning barcodes one at a time, it can scan an entire basket at once. Retailers that deploy these systems tag every product with an RFID tag, which is automatically read by RFID scanners at checkout. The customer places their basket in the scanning area, and within seconds the system captures the full contents, making checkout faster and more user-friendly.
Providing flexibility with mobile POS
Limited, fixed checkout areas create long queues and crowding, and those tills are typically staffed by a small number of employees, which slows service and frustrates customers. Adding more staff to checkout areas might look like the obvious fix, but it pulls those staff away from the rest of the store's operations.
Mobile POS technology addresses the problem differently, giving retailers a flexible checkout option on portable devices like phones or tablets. Regular checkout functions can still be carried out anywhere in the store, which lets staff complete transactions on the move without abandoning their other responsibilities. During busy periods, that flexibility is what lets retailers keep checkout fast without adding headcount.
Deploying integrated technology for unparalleled benefits
Sales and offers are one of the most common ways retailers attract new customers and keep existing ones engaged. But heavily discounted products lose their appeal fast if customers have to stand in long queues to redeem them, and some shoppers will abandon the purchase entirely. Much of that delay comes down to staff manually applying discounts at checkout, which is slow and gets worse during busy shopping events.
Deploying integrated technology at checkout terminals that applies discounts and offers automatically removes that bottleneck. Staff no longer need to manually key in promotions during a transaction, which speeds up checkout considerably. With that friction removed, staff can serve customers with a click of a button and spend more of their attention on the interaction itself, rather than the math behind it.
Ending on a good note
Consumer demands keep changing, and retailers have to stay adaptive to keep up. Brands are investing heavily in attracting customers in-store through product discounts and personalized deals, but all that investment only pays off if the POS experience at the end of the journey holds up its end of the deal.
The checkout stage plays an outsized role in the retail journey, issues there can cause customers to abandon their baskets entirely. A customer-focused POS solution from start to finish is what turns a newly acquired customer into a retained one.