Wednesday Wins in Customer Experience (CX) – The last mile can be the most important (or how my grocery store self scanner caused my head to pop off)

You may remember a few weeks back I wrote about the McDonald’s self-serve terminals that didn’t align with their menu offerings. This caused a disconnect for their staff. Today I am compelled to write about how my local grocery store is letting their customers down every day. I need to preface this story by owning the fact that when I went into store Monday night I was already hangry (hungry + angry = hangry).

As often happens on Monday nights I am late getting home and I am not as proactive as I should be with planning what I will be eating for dinner at 8:30. That said, I headed to my local grocer to pick up my more than often default dinner, a pre-cooked barbeque chicken. Did I mention I was hangry? I could feel my blood pressure elevating as I approached the area usually full of chickens ready to go. The closer I got I knew this was not going to end well for me. The panic set in as I realized there were no chickens and I knew I had to find an alternative.

Ok, in the big scheme of things not the end of the world. As luck would have it the deli had pre-cooked chicken breasts so the decision was made and I was on my way to check out. When I approached the check-out area I could not see any cashiers in site and as a result I would be forced to self-serve checkout. This is really where hangry and a user experience failure is not a good combination. In all honesty I was probably short with the supervisor who had to come over to my scanner (not once but twice) to reset it so I could proceed with the transaction. If I was, I apologize as you get my sympathy as I am sure you have to deal with this constantly every day

I would be willing to bet that there are not a lot of people reading this who have not encountered/been let down in the following manner. I live on the West Coast so I have it indoctrinated in me to show up to the store with my own canvas shopping bags, specifically as a number of retailers have eliminated plastic all together. I proceeded to scan my item and move it to the bagging area where I had placed, wait for it….my bag! Immediately the system locked as I had clearly violated all of the rules. I had to call the supervisor over to start the process all over. I repeated the process, placed the item down again, and then moved in my bag after the fact and yet I received the same error message. I know you know what I am talking about.

After we finally resolved and the on screen instructions had put me in my place I was allowed to put pay with my Visa and head home for a now even later dinner. The thing I found most frustrating with the system was that the last question the system asked me was “how many bags did I use?” Are you kidding me?

Ok – my is rant officially over. I like to think I am relatively tech savvy and upon thinking about this it occurred to me I could only think of one retailer (way to go Shopper’s Drug Mart) where I go and this doesn’t happen. I suspect it is a weight/sensor that can be adjusted. If you are a retailer please ensure you consider every single part of the user experience. I plan to return to the store and chat with the management as I am sure a simple call to their scanner vendor would resolve the issue. The fact that the supervisor stated that this is an ongoing problem tells me you need to get it fixed.

All that said here are some things to consider:

Dear Retailer and Purveyor of my coveted BBQ chicken:

1.   Please consider that I am going to give you money at least once a week – don’t make this a painful situation.

2.   Please provide your staff with the right messaging as opposed to having them communicate to me it is an ongoing problem which tells me you don’t value my relationship.

3.   Get out in front of these issues. Technology is fantastic but only when it works.

4.   Please treat me, your customer, as an asset (thanks for this Jeanne Bliss). I go by a number of other grocery stores on the way home and I have options.

As we continue to move into the world of automation there is still an important consideration for the consumer and that is who makes it easy for me. I believe people want to be loyal and the companies that are figuring that out are going to be the winners.    

Mark Smith is the Chief Experience Officer at Query Technologies Corp. Query works with clients to align their people, processes and technology to achieve their customer experience objectives.