Which one is best, self-checkout or manned lanes? The real answer may surprise you — it’s neither.
A survey by Grocery Dive found that the most popular approach is a hybrid approach combining self-checkout and manned lanes. Shoppers who used both methods tended to represent higher overall customer value.
What does this mean for your small grocery business?
It highlights that convenience, speed, and efficiency are top of mind for customers, regardless of what technologies you use. If you own a brick-and-mortar store, optimizing checkout speed could be the best thing you do to drive more sales this year. A winning approach combines the strongest aspects of technology with proper training and best practices.
In this article, we’ll explain the importance of cutting wait times, how to increase grocery store sales, and how to improve the customer experience with a few checkout tips.
Do Long Checkout Times Hurt Sales?
Do long checkout times hurt sales? The short answer is yes.
The checkout lane is the final impression your grocery store makes on a customer. So, even if you have a great store layout and friendly staff, a frustrating or slow experience could turn them off your store for good. If they share that experience in an online review, it can be devastating for a small business.
55% of shoppers say faster checkout would improve their grocery shopping experience — and while many customers like self-checkout, the majority indicated that overall checkout speed was the most important factor when picking which lane to use.
On the other hand, consistently offering a positive experience can win you repeat customers. Over half of customers note that a positive experience influences their opinion of a store more than advertising. Also, customers are much more likely to sign up for loyalty programs or make an extra purchase if they have a good shopping experience.
These statistics highlight just how much slow checkout speeds can impact sales and your ability to attract new customers. So when thinking about how to increase grocery store sales, your instinct might be to try new advertising or stock new products — but it might be best to start with the basics.
7 Best Practices To Improve Checkout Times and Boost Sales
Statistics don’t lie: fast checkout is a high priority for customers and a top consideration when they pick which stores to frequent. So, let’s get right into a few practical steps you can take today to speed up checkout and increase sales at your grocery store.
1. Choose the Right Grocery POS Software
Point of sale (POS) systems are loaded with features that empower your staff to solve long wait times, slow checkout experiences, and dissatisfied customers. These features manage all the tasks associated with checkout and streamline the entire shopping experience for your customers. As a result, you can improve customer service and generate more grocery store sales.
For an optimized checkout lane, look for POS software that offers the following features:
- Contactless payment processing: Make sure your POS system accepts popular forms of contactless payment, such as tap-to-pay cards and digital wallets. In-house payment processing also ensures that you can process transactions quickly.
- Cloud-based with offline mode: Cloud-based solutions tend to be more stable than legacy servers since there’s no need to maintain or update them yourself. This ultimately maximizes system uptime. Leading cloud-based systems continue to work offline so that a system outage won’t grind your business to a halt.
- Integration with scales: Find a grocery POS system that can integrate with your deli scales and other weighing hardware so you can quickly weigh items and print off barcodes.
- Electronic shelf tag support: While not a must-have, electronic shelf tags that can sync directly with your POS system ensure all prices are accurate, reducing the need for frequent price checks and manual overrides.
- Customer display integration: Customer displays are a great way to ensure you and your customers are on the same page, giving them a transparent view of the checkout process.
- Inventory management: A POS with integrated inventory management ensures that all stock changes are reflected on your system and any pricing updates are instantly reflected on everyone’s system.
Above all, make sure you choose a grocery POS system that is easy to use. No amount of advanced features is going to help you improve the customer experience if it’s clunky or too complex.
2. Customize Your POS Interface
A modern grocery store POS system gives your staff multiple ways to streamline the checkout process. One of the most useful is the ability to customize the POS interface with hotkeys, quick-select functions, prompts, and more.
Customize your POS touchscreen to quickly access your most used functions or popular items without navigating through multiple menus. Set up certain items to automatically prompt cashiers for quantity or weight when scanned.
You can also set up custom buttons for adding service fees and bottle deposits, or suspend transactions and resume them later.
These are just a few of the ways you can customize a POS touchscreen. By tailoring your interface to the way your store operates, you can significantly speed up transactions and improve customer satisfaction.
3. Accept Contactless Payments
Contactless payment methods, such as tap-to-pay cards and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Wallet, are quickly becoming the most popular payment methods in retail. Not only are they faster and more convenient, but they are also among the safest.
Use a POS that supports contactless payments to provide a modern customer experience and speed up your checkout times. Ensure your grocery store POS system uses payment processing that is fully PCI-DSS compliant to ensure your customer data stays safe.
4. Optimize Staffing
We’ve all been there, waiting in line while a poor lone cashier struggles to check everyone out. When you’re understaffed during busy times, it doesn’t reflect badly on the cashiers, but on your business.
Optimize staffing by using the reports on your POS system to identify when your peak hours, days, and seasons are. These numbers will give you insights into when to increase staff or when to start hiring for seasonal work.
Ensure any new workers are fully trained on your processes (ideally during slower hours) to make sure they work independently while still providing a high level of customer service.
5. Offer Branded Reusable Bags
Reusable bags have become more popular with customers, especially in states that have implemented fees for single-use plastic bags. But while reusable bags have become more popular, people often forget them.
Offering reusable bags at checkout is a great way to make an extra sale while ensuring that customers can continue to check out quickly. Make sure your bags sport your brand and logo so they’re not only convenient but a way to advertise your store as well.
6. Train Staff in Efficient Scanning and Bagging Techniques
Learning to scan and bag items efficiently speeds up the checkout process and prevents you from angering customers by damaging items. Sending customers home with a well-bagged set of groceries also leaves a strong impression that will keep your store top of mind for their next shop.
You want to make sure heavier or packaged items are towards the bottom with delicate items toward the top to avoid damage.
This can be hard to do perfectly since some customers place their items on the conveyor randomly. Lay out bags in a staging area near the scanner and bag items as you go, setting aside any delicate items to place on top later.
Here are some other considerations when bagging items:
- Bag any raw meat separately, or put it in a separate bag before putting it in a reusable bag to prevent cross-contamination.
- To prevent damage, place delicate items like bread and chips at the top of a bag or separately.
- Keep similar temperatures together. For example, don’t place ice cream next to a hot sandwich.
- Bag produce together, with heavier items at the bottom.
- Distribute weight evenly within a bag and between multiple bags.
- Put sturdy items like boxes around the perimeter of the bag to create a barrier
Also, know what not to bag. Large jugs with handles or big bags of rice might be best kept separately. If you’re unsure, ask the customer what they’d prefer.
Train staff in bagging best practices to increase customer satisfaction, prevent accidental damage, and speed up checkout.
7. Offer Self Checkout
Many articles have been written about how self-checkout is dying or that major brands are moving away from it. However, as we’ve seen, self-checkout machines aren’t going anywhere. Instead, retailers are re-evaluating how to use them most efficiently.
Self-checkout machines can help save grocers time and money in several ways and are still a great option for customers who only have a few items. Limiting the number of items in self-checkout can help prevent congestion, and reduce the chances of customers needing help.
Related Read: Interview with Luke Henry, VP of IT Retail, on the current state of self-checkout.
You may also consider restricting self-checkout to items that aren’t age-restricted, to avoid sending staff over to scan IDs. That said, you should always have a staff member near the self-checkout area to help customers with any issues.
Pro tip: Self-checkout lanes are most efficient when they support, not replace, your manned checkout lines. By offering both options to customers, they’ll choose which option is the most convenient for them, ensuring they get the best experience every time.
How To Increase Grocery Store Sales With a Best-in-Class Grocery POS Solution
To optimize your grocery store checkout lanes, you need to combine the best of in-person customer service and technology. Neither alone will meet (and exceed) today’s customer expectations.
By investing some time and effort into making your checkout as efficient as possible, you’ll be rewarded with happier customers and higher sales.
Bolster your checkout process with technology that was designed specifically to meet the needs of small grocery stores, supermarkets, and food markets. IT Retail was built by grocers and comes with many easy-to-use features that help grocery stores improve the customer experience, increase sales, and cut overhead costs.
Learn more about how IT Retail can speed up checkout and improve customer satisfaction today.
