By George Anderson
With 60 percent of the checkouts being self-checkouts, Tesco has made those lanes manned by employees the exception to the company's self-serve rule in one of its Metro stores in London.
The company currently has self-checkouts in 137 stores in the U.K with plans to have units operating in 220 locations by the end of the year. At that pace, self-checkout will become the norm at Tesco stores in the near future.
"Self-checkout has proved very popular with customers in other stores," said Jonathan Yelland, team leader for self-checkout at Tesco, in a released statement. "It will provide busy office workers in Cheapside with a convenient service and give them a choice of how to pay."
Alberto Camuri, vice president for retail solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for NCR, said that, in addition to consumer acceptance of the technology, "Self-checkout gives retailers on-demand capacity and unrivalled flexibility when it comes to staffing their stores."
Moderator's Comment: Has the acceptance of self-checkout by consumers and the benefits of its use by retailers (staffing flexibility) come to the point where it will soon become the rule in many retail stores? Is there a set of Best Practices retailers should know to make the best use of self-checkout systems? - George Anderson - Moderator