Why and How to Optimize the Checkout Process?

For stores that focus on it, the in-store experience is generally very positive. Shoppers enjoy the shopping journey up until the common bottleneck at checkout. Slow service, long lines, and inefficiency… These issues cause significant frustration that affects your store beyond just its image: in fact, up to 65% of shoppers would rather go elsewhere to avoid long queues.

Boosting customer satisfaction directly translates to higher store traffic, and this can be accomplished by optimizing the checkout process. But how can this be done?

Minimizing Queues

Your objective: eliminate customer waiting times. On average, each shopper spends 11 minutes waiting in-store, and nearly 38% of them believe that even 5 minutes is too long. It’s your responsibility to implement strategies to reduce queues in your stores:

• Add more checkout counters, ensuring they are staffed. There’s nothing worse for customers than waiting while seeing empty counters that could be serving them.
• Implement a single queue system, which is perceived as more efficient by consumers and helps manage the flow better between counters.
• Simplify the identification process for your customers and their loyalty accounts. With physical loyalty cards becoming less common, spelling out names at checkout isn’t any easier. Go digital by offering your customers a virtual loyalty card on their phone or a QR code for quick identification.

Embrace digital tools to boost store traffic by providing a seamless checkout experience:

• Install self-checkout counters with RFID chips for easy product recognition.
• Introduce scan-and-go options, letting customers quickly finalize purchases by scanning items as they shop.

Enable Checkout Anywhere in the Store

30% of French consumers abandon their purchases due to long queues. This tip involves making your employees active participants in the checkout process, enhancing the in-store experience and reducing end-of-journey discouragement.

Equip your sales associates with tablets connected to your checkout system. This enables mobile checkout, faster service, and a continuous relationship with the customer. From initial inquiry to payment, your customers deal with a single representative, fostering loyalty and increasing store traffic.

Promote Contactless Payment

Accelerated by the health crisis and rapidly growing over the past two years, contactless payment greatly improves the shopping experience: 30% of consumers say it directly influences their loyalty to a brand. Whether using a credit card with a limit, a smartphone banking app, or a digital wallet, contactless payment ensures quick and easy transactions.

Even better, some stores provide payment via a QR code on the customer’s smartphone, enabling simultaneous credit card payment and loyalty account updates, creating a seamless shopping experience.

Discover also: 6 Examples of Successful Customer Experiences in Sports Retail

The concept of “checkout” is beginning to vanish with the advent of cashierless stores. These small retail spaces utilize artificial intelligence for automatic product detection. Payment is pre-authorized upon entry via an app linked to a bank account, and the account is debited shortly after exit, once the selected products are detected by a security gate. The traditional checkout system is completely replaced by a smartphone app. Looking ahead, why not consider a subdermal implant? A trend to watch…