Question

Communication

Wholesome and Happy Foods is a farm-to-family grocery store located in the Pacific Northwest. The company recently installed four self-checkout lanes that allow customers to scan their own groceries and pay for their purchases using an automated checkout kiosk. The kiosks are monitored by a single attendant. In recent weeks, management has become concerned that some customers are not scanning all of the items that they bring through the self-checkout lanes.

Discuss your thoughts of the above, suggesting features and capabilities for the kiosks that would serve as control procedures, ensuring that all items brought through the self-checkout lanes are properly scanned and purchased. Further, do you think that the company will incur losses from people, who don't choose to scan one or two items here and there? Can the attendant even tell? Does management have a valid concern? How would they be able to tell that items have been stolen in this manner?

Answer 1

Basically in the given situation, the company has installed the self checkout lanes that allows the customers to scan their own groceries and pay for their purchases using an automated checkout kiosk and these kiosks are monitored by a single attendant.

This step by the management is quite an appreciable one as it helps in faster billing and an easier checkout facility to the customers. Given the pros of the situation it can also be said that there can be cons to the given situation. The reason for the management being concerned that some customers are not scanning all of the items that they bring through the self checkout lanes is the cons of this system which is leading to revenue leakage and is a serious concern to the management.

The con here lies with the integrity, honesty of the customers ideally which cannot be changed by the management of the company, thus certain measures or steps have to be taken in order to ensure that revenue leakage doesn't happen and all the items are properly scanned for, paid and checked out.

Now let us try to understand what measures or features or capabilities could be taken into consideration so that all the items bought are scanned and paid for and finally checked out.

The kiosks are currently monitored by a single attendant, which is not sufficient to keep a control over all the four kiosks. Thus the number of such attendants can be increased so that effective monitoring can be done and any deviations could be caught. If in case the company feels that it is not much economical to hire many attendants then such facilities can be installed during checkout wherein if any item is left unscanned and is being checked out, an alarm is raised in order to alert the situation and thus it can be monitored and can be proceeded accordingly. Also at the final checkout the bill can be mapped to the items purchased and any deviations can be noted and taken care of.

By implementing or following above steps the issue could be resolved to a greater extent. Definitely the company would incur losses from people who don't choose to scan one or two items here and there. If looked at it singly it might not seem that material or important but when such things happen to a greater extent then it could be a cause of concern. The attendant can be assigned certain responsibilities to guide the customers in a polite way so that they don't get offended and also the revenue leakage is saved. The managements concern here is very much valid because it could be a loss creating situation.