4A-Forming An Opportunity Belief

I believe checkout lanes have truly lost their efficiency. Stores have created express checkout lanes consisting of 10 or fewer items and self-checkouts to promote efficiency, but somehow there still continues to be some issue preventing enough registers from staying open. This has been an issue for several years now and is only getting worse. Customers are demanding a more efficient method to checking out as they are growing extremely frustrated with the current state of things. A way to fix this issue is by allowing multiple ”cashiers” to be equipped with smartphones that have scanning and card swiping abilities, which many large stores have already, but more are required. This is a similar situation to the Chick-fil-A drive thru.

#1 College-aged female customer shopping at Walmart
Q: Do you shop here often?
A: Like once every two or three weeks.
Q: Do you find yourself using the self checkout more or the checkout lanes with cashiers?
A: The self-checkout because I feel like it goes faster at times, but I use the other ones when I have a lot of items.
Q: Do you get frustrated with long checkout lines, and when it takes over 10 minutes just to checkout?
A: Definitely. It really should not take that long just to check out, and these lines that go on forever, it's ridiculous. If they would just hire more cashiers and open more lanes this really wouldn't happen. I just feel like I'm wasting valuable time that I could spend studying or something, you know?
Q: Oh I completely agree. So to improve this situation, how would you feel if employees were equipped with smartphones that had scanning and paying abilities via only card, of course? This would be in addition to the existing self-checkout lines and cashier lanes. Similar to the Chick-fil-A drive thru, there would be 1 or 2 floating cashiers for each lane that would essentially just go through and check out card-paying customers using a smartphone provided to them by the company. And once the customer gets to the front of the lane, the items that need bagging or boxing will be brought to the cashier at the register and they will bag them.
A: That seems smart. I like that. It not only promotes efficiency but can also encourage customers to use less plastic bags because many of these items really don't need to bagged. And stores like Walmart can just put items into boxes instead or encourage people to use reusable bags!

#2 Male cashier at Walmart
Q: In your opinion, why do you think these checkout lanes get so long and take forever just to get to the front?
A: Well there's simply just not enough of us. Maybe if more people were hired, then it wouldn't be a problem.
Q: Do you think part of the reason why the checking out process takes so long is because you not only have to check out items, but bag them as well?
A: Oh yeah. It's not scanning the items that take an eternity, it's bagging them. 
Q: How would you feel if there were 1 or 2 floating cashiers for each lane that would essentially just go through and check out card-paying customers using a smartphone provided to them by the company. And once the customer gets to the front of the lane, the items that need bagging or boxing will be brought to the cashier at the register and they will bag them.
A: I definitely think it would make the checkout process go a lot quicker. But that would mean more cashiers need to be hired, which these companies are not doing in the first place. I doubt they would want to use their money to invest in that type of technology, let alone add more employees to the payroll.

#3 Mother of three young children, shopping at Walmart
Q: Hello ma'am I wont waste a lot of your time since I see you have your hands full. But I have just a couple questions. How satisfied are you with the checkout process here and the wait times?
A: I am not satisfied at all. It takes me close to 20 minutes just to check out, which is absurd when I have 3 children screaming or crying about different things. It's such a waste of time, but I have no other choice, how else am I supposed to get my groceries?
Q: Do you use the self-checkout lanes more often than the cashier lanes?
A: No, I never really use self-checkout, because I usually have way too many items and three kids that I need to tend to while I'm shopping, so I would just be wasting more time than saving it through self-checkout.
Q: Do you try to use reusable bags when you are shopping, or do you mainly use plastic bags?
A: I bring my own reusable bags. It's just easier to carry especially when you have so much else going on. Did I mention I have 3 kids?
Q: What if employees were equipped with smartphones that had scanning and paying abilities via only card. There would be 1 or 2 floating cashiers for each lane that would essentially just go through and check out card-paying customers using a smartphone provided to them by the company. And once the customer gets to the front of the lane, the items that need bagging or boxing will be brought to the cashier at the register and they will bag them.
A: That's not a bad idea. If that can save me some time then I'm all for it. However, I do pay with cash sometimes, not very often though. So when it comes to times like that, I really don't think this new idea will improve anything.

Reflection and summary: The one thing I learned which I did not really think about before is that more "cashiers" would have to be hired and added to the payroll for this idea to work, which is what many companies were avoiding in the first place. Although there are some limitations to this idea, I still believe that it would save about 5 minutes of each customer's time and it can also help to improve the planet in a way. After the interviews, I realized there should only be about 3-4 of these additional "cashiers" per shift so that companies will not feel like they are making a huge investment. In the long run, I definitely think these interviews were important for gaining insight on different perspectives and learning how the implementation of these ideas would affect different types of people.