Time is sometimes as precious as money to today’s shoppers.  A high school friend recently posted this on Facebook: “At retail stores and the supermarket, why not have an express line based on time and not the number of items…..? PLEASE let me leave with my 5 items in 60 seconds. No checks, no ’20 questions’, no coupons — 60 seconds and out.” Which reminds me that it is worth examining whether we independent retailers are doing what we can to help hurried customers complete their transactions quickly and efficiently.

First and foremost this requires adequate staffing.  The grocery store where I shop, due to geographic convenience, has over 10 checkout lanes, but usually only two are open due to a lack of employees.  The lack of employees is undoubtedly due to a lack of sales — but you can see how cyclical this becomes, because the lack of sales comes from the lack of service. I need groceries, so I continue to shop there. But if you are running a specialty shop, you don’t want your customers to choose to patronize a chain store because its customer service is more efficient.

In addition to making certain that you have enough employees to man the cash registers, you should take a look at your checkout procedures and how your employees interact with each customer.  You might even want to ask a friend to buy something, and observe the transaction.  Some stores use a professional “mystery shopper” to find out about their customers’ experience, or even video monitoring (which always seems a bit like spying to me, although I’m sure the feedback is valuable).

Consider the efficiency of the layout of your checkout area.  We all know that this is a magic zone for impulse items, but it’s easy for this to lead to clutter and confusion.  There should be a large and inviting area for customers to spread out their purchases when they are ready to check out.

You undoubtedly offer boxes for the gift items that you sell, and it helps to have a back or side counter where you can take care of boxing and possibly even gift wrapping. This also needs to be done quickly.  It helps to have your supplies all conveniently at hand, and the box sizes sorted and labeled.  Make sure you have a enough different sizes to accommodate most of your gift merchandise.

It is usually the special transactions that take time — gift cards, discounts, credits, shipping and such. Examine your procedures and forms for each of these, and make sure that they are easy and quick. Make sure that every staff member knows how to handle them all, and practice them during employee training. You should also have a reference guide handy in case an employee forgets how to do something. 

We bought the store next to ours in 1986 mostly so that we could join it together with ours and have two different checkout counters.  I wouldn’t suggest that you take this drastic a measure (although it’s worked out well for us), but perhaps there are other steps you can take in order to make your checkout process as quick and efficient as possible.  “Sixty seconds and out” would be a great goal!

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder