I am getting more and more interested in service design. As a fan of great experiences, I often automatically think of the pluses and minuses of various services that I come across. I would love to contribute to more service design creation and improvement projects and I think communication is a big part of successul services so it just expands on my existing competences. Here are a few ideas that I have based on my own recent service experiences.
One station to weigh, check and search for goods
Christmas shopping. Everyone is stressed and rushed. Time to weigh some goods without barcodes or cannot find the price. Not cool.
Situation A: unclear and unlogical process
In the shop I visited, I had to help myself to some unpackaged products and get an accurate price tag for. Each product had a numeric identifier but on scale the numbers were not in a sequential order and when I finally found the right product button in the list, I was displayed another button for printing the price tag for barely 1 second. I had to repeat the process because I didn’t manage to react in time only to discover that now two identical stickers had automatically been printed quietly out at my crotch height without needing to press that button at all. There was no option to scan the barcode from display screen so the only way to register the price was an unsustainable sticker. I love the shops where I can just skip the stickers.
Situation B: reducing mental load and speed
Products were priced by weight but they didn’t have designated numbers as per standard. Usually weighing and determining specific products is left to the cashiers in that store chain but I had chosen to use a self-scanning handle. Panic hit and I considered abandoning my planned purchase for a second but I needed to buy specific things and didn’t have time to go to more stores. When I found a scale, I was positively surprised because I could type in the category of my product and it was enough to only start typing banana to see related products. It might have been more difficult if they had more than two types like is usual for apples, for example, but I was positively surprised by the experience. Usually when weighting fruits I take them one type at a time to scale because I just cannot remember more numeric identifiers. It is quite tedious but with this new solution I didn’t need to remember anything and could have weighed all fruit one after another. Much smoother service experience!
I recall however an earlier situation where my friend had added to her basket various candy you can buy by weight only to discover that she needs to guess their categories and know their numbers or specific names to be able to weigh and get price tags. That was a nightmare. Imagine buying some candy for the first time and needing to know if it is a caramel, chocolate, nuts based or something else before getting anywhere. It felt like a surprise test. My friend is more patient than me though.
Situation C: too much irrelevant information or missing info
Pricetags of sale items placed all together were missing or displayed all together on one A4 paper with 23 other prices and another 24 prices were on the other side of the paper. To view those, I would have had to walk around the pallet storing all items. I tried scanning quickly the price poster from my side but failed to find the relevant price so I gave up on buying the thing I was interested in because it was just too much work to figure out the price.
In another shop that is famous for missing price tags, they had a permanent price check station that was constantly used by regulars of that shop or that is what I assume because although helpful, it wasn’t very visible. Also I am not sure how many such check stations were available in the big store. How far would you go to check a price? One meter? Five? If you are really invested then maybe 10 meters but if no employee is in vicinity either then most likely that product will stay in store.
Situation D: struggle to find what you need
I was looking for a specific item unsuccessfully and eventually turned to an employee who tried to help but also could not find it. That item was probably out of stock but no-one confirmed. Another potential sale was definitely lost.
Solution
a)One solution could do it all: weigh goods and provide price tags, help check prices, guide to product location and inform of stock count to help and save time. It would require keeping systems up to date about location of products in store but I would like to think that stores already have this data. At least on the level of isle number or fridge number/name.
b)If an app/scanning handle is available, they could also take care of all of the above except weighing via barcode/QR code reading and text input for search.
Part 2:
During one of those Christmas shopping trips, I got chosen for a random self-scan check – which is quite normal when you are not a regular customer – and age check though I had bought only non-alcoholic drinks and food. Apparently a few non-alcoholic ciders triggered that for some reason.
The random check was smoothe and I was offered candy after which was a nice touch but once that was cleared I was once again stoppedby the self-scanning register and asked to wait for an employee for age check. Thankfully they could now clear me from distance but that can be inaccurate.
Ways to improve age check
It would have been better if together with the random check request their would have already flagged the need for age check as well so that those two could have been done at once and be based on ID. It would have saved time for everyone and contributed to a nicer customer experience.
Alternatively age check could have been done based on me registering to use self-scanning because you need to be a registered customer to use self-scanning and they should already know my age. It would still entail some risks.
Taking a quick selfie when paying and uploading via store’s app or inserting a specific password could be good solutions to ensure that children have not borrowed a grownup’s shop membership card to buy alcohol. It would reduce workload for employees and potentially speed up check-out.
The photo version would work well when scanning with store’s app scanning though with proper sync, the customer could still choose to use the self-scanning handle as well. Password should work well even if the customer doesn’t have store’s app.
There are probably other clever solutions out there and I am looking forward to experiencing them but these are my first thoughts on ways to improve.