Listen to your employees; it may make you a lot of money
What does efficiency but not effectiveness cost you?
This weekend it cost Marshall’s more than $165.95 in sales in just ten minutes.
You may have noticed that a lot of retail outlets, QSRs, and banks and have gone to a process where one line feeds all of the checkout stands. This has been proven to be more efficient and faster. But is it more effective? At Marshall’s last weekend, the answer was: “NO.”
As I approached the checkout line on Saturday, I saw there were 15 people in the line before me. That is a long line. There were four checkstands open. If they had had a line for each checker, it would have averaged four people per line and I would have been able to see who had how much to check out and take my chances. But, with the new system, you just wait and if one checker or two get held up, everyone waits and the line gets longer, and it did.
I was ready to walk, but my wife wanted to stay because she liked the items she had found. I got out of line and asked the head checker if they could put someone else on the line to speed up checking since they have 10 registers at that store. Her response was very interesting: “It is now 12:35 and the next group is not scheduled to come in until 1:00.” I then asked how many people get frustrated when they look at the long line and walk and she said: “I do not have an exact count, but I on Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday it is a lot and I have told the store managers the system is costing us sales and they need to do a better job of scheduling.”
This is another example of a good employee who wants to do a good job and provide customer service who feels frustrated. I bet someone could hire her away from Marshall’s and possibly a number of other employees like her.
Just so you know, we walked out without purchasing the items and so did two other people who were in line behind us. I do not know the cost of the items they were going to purchase, but I do know that efficiency sure got in the way of effectiveness.
This weekend it cost Marshall’s more than $165.95 in sales in just ten minutes.
You may have noticed that a lot of retail outlets, QSRs, and banks and have gone to a process where one line feeds all of the checkout stands. This has been proven to be more efficient and faster. But is it more effective? At Marshall’s last weekend, the answer was: “NO.”
As I approached the checkout line on Saturday, I saw there were 15 people in the line before me. That is a long line. There were four checkstands open. If they had had a line for each checker, it would have averaged four people per line and I would have been able to see who had how much to check out and take my chances. But, with the new system, you just wait and if one checker or two get held up, everyone waits and the line gets longer, and it did.
I was ready to walk, but my wife wanted to stay because she liked the items she had found. I got out of line and asked the head checker if they could put someone else on the line to speed up checking since they have 10 registers at that store. Her response was very interesting: “It is now 12:35 and the next group is not scheduled to come in until 1:00.” I then asked how many people get frustrated when they look at the long line and walk and she said: “I do not have an exact count, but I on Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday it is a lot and I have told the store managers the system is costing us sales and they need to do a better job of scheduling.”
This is another example of a good employee who wants to do a good job and provide customer service who feels frustrated. I bet someone could hire her away from Marshall’s and possibly a number of other employees like her.
Just so you know, we walked out without purchasing the items and so did two other people who were in line behind us. I do not know the cost of the items they were going to purchase, but I do know that efficiency sure got in the way of effectiveness.
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