Supermarket ditches self-service tills and goes back to staff on checkouts
Supermarket chain Booths plans to restaff its locations in the north of England and get rid of self-checkout kiosks.
A popular UK supermarket is ditching self-service tills in favour for fully staffed checkouts.
Booths, which operates 28 stores in northern England, will reinstate staffed tills in all but two of its locations.
Most other major supermarket chains in the UK have been embracing self-service tills in recent years, but Booths said it hopes to improve the customer experience by doing the reverse.
Booths managing director Nigel Murray told BBC: ‘Our customers have told us this over time, that the self-scan machines that we’ve got in our stores they can be slow, they can be unreliable, they’re obviously impersonal.
‘We stock quite a lot of loose items – fruit and veg and bakery – and as soon as you go to a self-scan with those you’ve got to get a visual verification on them, and some customers don’t know one different apple versus another for example.
‘We are a business that prides ourselves on the high standards and high levels of warm, personal care.
‘We like to talk to people and we’re really proud that we’re moving largely to a place where our customers are served by people, by human beings, so rather than artificial intelligence, we’re going for actual intelligence.’
Booths’ decision has been met with both praise and criticism, as some said queuing times may make time spent in store longer than normal.
One customer, however, said she looks forward to staff chatting to her and making her shopping experience better.
Other supermarkets have slowed down their self-checkout rollout, including Amazon Fresh.
Last summer the company cited cost issues in constructing the stores was much higher than a standard grocery store, and that sales at most of them had not met expectations.
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