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No one likes self-checkout. The BBC called it a "spectacular failure." LA Times readers named it one of the technologies we would be better off without. And yet, those kiosks where you scan and bag your purchases without the help of a cashier are everywhere—CVS, RiteAid, Target, and Walmart, not to mention so many other retailers. In 2022, an estimated 29% of food retail transactions went through self-checkout lanes, double the number from 2018.
Customers are frustrated that retailers continue to push this technology despite how poor the experience is. I'm of the mind that our woes and despair shouldn't go to waste. There are valuable lessons to be learned from what makes self-checkout so miserable, and if technology companies pay attention to them, we'll all be better off for it.
@alexschmidty basically everybody on earth is stealing from self checkouts — and that includes you ? #money #groceryshopping #selfcheckout #accident ? Hey Now - Album Version - Red Garland
1. The User Is Always Inexperienced
No matter how many times you've been through a self-checkout lane, it is never anywhere close to the number of times that a cashier has checked out a customer. The cashier is experienced, which is important for making the line move quickly.
At a self-checkout kiosk, you're expected to navigate a series of prompts, questions, and technology. But they aren't uniform across all self-checkout technology. So even if you use self-checkout at four different stores, you are necessarily becoming more experienced with it each time. In one 2021 survey, 67% of people said they experienced a failure at self-checkout. Even if you are somehow magically more adept at using self-checkout than the rest of us, you are at the mercy of all the other inexperienced users ahead of you who slow down the line. Plus, while you're at the kiosk, you're also feeling social pressure to move quickly.
In short, the user is inexperienced and doesn't have a chance to become more experienced in an effective way due to the differences in each kiosk and the environment.
There's a principle in video game design that the player has to be able to get better at the game. As the game gets harder, the player also has to improve, or it won't be any fun. If the player never gets better, you have to change the design of the game. And if a game is so hard that the player can't make strides even in the very easiest levels, then you either need tutorial levels or an easy mode or something else that helps the player with their competence. But when players feel like they are forever inexperienced, they resent the game and stop playing it.
2. Self-Service Should Mean Self-Service
"Unexpected item in the bagging area!" "ID check required for this purchase!" Self-checkout systems make the promise of giving you a self-service experience, but they don't deliver. They're only self-service to a point. If you scan an item twice, select the wrong payment method, accidentally get charged for a bag when you brought your own, forget to scan your discount card at the right time, or make any other trivial mistake, you are now at the mercy of someone else. When a problem does occur, a staff member has to notice it, come to your aid, figure out what happened, and correct it. You were promised self-service when, in fact, you are so disempowered that you can't troubleshoot or correct a single thing that might go wrong.
Where else do we see this same problem? Think of all the online services, particularly subscriptions, that require you to call to cancel. You can open the account on your own. You can make payments, change your settings, and do virtually anything else without assistance. But if you want to close the account, well, you'll have to speak to a representative during business hours. Customers hate it. (At PCMag, we even call it out in product reviews if a service is a pain to cancel.)
3. Don't Take Away That Which Users Have Come to Expect
The advent of self-checkout meant a drastic reduction in cashiers at stores that use it. The problem is that human cashiers do much more than ring up your purchases and take your payment. They also answer questions and give personalized help. Moving from a human cashier system to self-checkout takes away aspects of the experience that used to exist. And people hate when you take away something they either love or have come to expect in an experience. As a result, the switch from cashier to self-checkout is a downgrade, not an upgrade.
You know who else is guilty of taking away something that customers have come to expect? Multiple online retailers are ditching their "free return" policies. Many companies created unsustainable models for handling returns in the first place—for example, instead of a returned item going back into stock, it would be sold off to a discount retailer or simply thrown away. And now that their unsustainable practices have caught up with them, you and I are buying return shipping labels, paying restocking fees, and getting charged in other ways for returning or exchanging an item. People aren't happy about it after growing accustomed to the free returns norms cemented by early leaders in online retail like Amazon and Zappos.
4. If You're Going to Make People Do Labor, Give Them Something in Return
Self-checkout is free labor. You don't get anything in return for doing it—not a discount, not a credit, and not overall lower prices at the store.
Technology has shown that people are, in fact, willing to do labor without receiving payment, but you have to give them something in return. Early versions of Re-Captcha and Duolingo—two technologies founded and cofounded by Luis von Ahn, who has built his career studying and developing crowdsourcing—proved it. Before Google bought it, Re-Captcha showed that people were willing to help decipher text from scans of old books in exchange for better security. Duolingo, in its early incarnation, proved that users would help translate articles from one language to another if, in exchange, they got to learn new languages.
Using a self-checkout station means you're giving away labor for free to the corporation that owns the store, and you get nothing in return. And seeing as the user gets nothing for their work, they might take the matter of compensation into their own hands—which would explain why the number of customers who pay for some but not all their items at self-checkout is almost 7%.
@officialrushfam We gotta have a talk Zara ?? #selfcheckout #zara ? original sound - Keshia Rush
A Glimmer of Hope
Perhaps the worst thing about self-checkout is that so many retailers have dug their heels in about it. They keep it despite customers hating it and losses from shoplifting or errors. They see it as a sunk cost and continue to believe that what they save in labor fees makes up for it.
A bit of hope is that some companies are either ending self-checkout in select stores or changing their policies. Walmart, for instance, ended self-checkout at three stores in New Mexico in 2023. Target is testing a new policy for self-checkout where, in select stores, customers must have 10 items or fewer to use it. Wegmans ended a self-checkout program that let shoppers scan items as they put them into their carts, and ShopRite pulled self-checkout kiosks from one store after customer complaints.
Let's hope other technology makers are paying attention and don't make the same mistakes.