Lines at checkout counters are one of the major problems facing retail stores. What can be done to ensure that queues at the cash registers do not hinder the development of the trading business?

The presence of traffic jams can also reduce the flow of customers because, seeing a traffic jam, a potential buyer will not even enter the store. And if he does come in, he will quickly leave without making a single purchase. There can be up to 90% of such clients. And in order not to lose his client, the store owner needs to seriously think about how to minimize queues at the checkout counters.

The study says that a queue of three people seems comfortable to the buyer, but as the number increases, psychological discomfort arises. This means that you need to clearly monitor the crowds at the cash registers and immediately take certain measures to prevent the queues from growing.

Why are there queues in stores?

1. The cashier is not efficient enough (no experience, skill or desire)

Such cashiers become especially noticeable in the evening, when there are the most customers in the store. If the cashier is sluggish, the line at the checkout will grow, and the number of dissatisfied customers will grow. The next day, they most likely will not enter this store again.

Working at the cash register requires automation, which needs to be developed. In addition, when communicating with customers, the cashier should be friendly and calm. Otherwise, irritation will grow on both sides.

2. The equipment breaks down or is set to a not very high speed limit

Not everything depends on the person. Sometimes equipment can also create additional queues. Breakdown, malfunction, low speed of processes - such moments must be foreseen, and if they occur, quickly corrected. For example, when a POS terminal - a device for accepting plastic cards for payment - takes a long time to process a request from a bank, then not only the card owner, but also all store visitors standing in line have to wait for a “response”.

3. Incorrect location of the checkout area

The checkout area is the place where customers spend more than 15% of their time. It is necessary to take care of comfort in this area. From the very beginning, it is necessary to correctly design the checkout area, correctly positioning the cash register, display cases, and shelving. The checkout area should be quite comfortable; the racks should stand firmly so that they cannot be broken or dropped. In this place it is necessary to provide additional ventilation so that in hot weather the living conditions in it are quite comfortable.

4. Rational use of the store area

In an effort to save every meter of retail space, the checkout area cannot be reduced. If there is not enough space, then even a line of three people at the checkout will look like a large mass of people.

Be sure to take all these points into account, and then even the existing queues at the checkout will not be the reason for the decrease in customers in your store.

What else can be done to ensure that queues at the cash registers do not hinder the development of the trading business?

1. Install self-service checkouts

According to the results of individual studies, it is the installation of self-service checkouts that is considered one of the main methods of “combat” queues. Of course, not every buyer will immediately cope with this payment method, but gradual support of this process by sales specialists will help buyers get used to this innovation. This will be especially valuable for those who are in a hurry and do not want to stand in lines.

Self-checkouts take up less space. Thus, the passage of customers in the checkout area will be faster.

2. Train and motivate employees

Even if the majority of cashiers are inexperienced or slow employees, do not rush to fire them. Inexperienced ones need to be trained and mentors from among experienced cashiers assigned to them. Additional forms of motivation need to be applied to those who are slow. Material stimulation works best in such cases.

3. Use additional cashiers during peak hours

During peak hours, use experienced cashiers. Strengthen cash registers with employees of other departments, for example, by attracting sales consultants. Train sales consultants and motivate their work with additional payments. This is a good motivation for employees; within working hours they will be able to perform both their direct duties and additional functions. Your employees will become “generalists” and their value will increase. And the queues at the cash registers will be shorter.

4. Install additional cash registers

Weigh your financial capabilities and, if cash registers are not really enough, purchase additional cash registers. Such a purchase is necessary when there are really not enough cash registers. Conduct research, analyze customer traffic during the day and evening. And if the problem of queues is only a lack of devices, buy and install them. This will relieve cashiers, reduce queues at the cash registers and attract additional customers.

5. Work out your staffing schedule

Optimize your store staffing. Pay attention to what time more cashiers are needed and invite additional cashiers at this time. Possibility of employment in shifts or part-time. Bring all cashiers out during peak hours. And for those who are comfortable working part-time, invite them for a certain time. Then, during periods of special influx of customers, the queues at the checkout counters will be short. And at other times the cash registers will not be idle.

6. Engage shoppers all day long

Queues at the cash register during rush hours will be short if the store takes measures to additionally attract customers at other times. For example, you can announce discounts in the morning, and promotions in the afternoon. The flow of customers will be redirected and queues at the cash registers will be uniform throughout the day.

Thus, using our small but very important tips, you can make your customers' stay in your stores more enjoyable. The lines at the box office will be short, and your stay at the ticket office will be comfortable.

Tatiana Zagumennova

Lines at the checkout counter are a pressing problem for many retail store owners. Customers complain, leave, abandon purchases without paying for them, and you can be sure: now they are unlikely to return to your store. But don't despair! The online magazine “Business.ru” provides several basic rules for “fighting” queues at a retail establishment.

Losing patience: what's bad about queues?

British researchers have calculated that the average European resident spends an average of about a year in store queues! Also, according to public opinion polls, more than 40% of modern buyers admit that the presence of a queue in a store can be a good reason to “pass by” a retail establishment and change their intention to make a purchase there. In modern society, when every minute of time counts for each of us, waiting in line is a heavy burden for every person.

Professional automation of goods accounting in retail. Organize your store

Take control of sales and track indicators for cashiers, points and organizations in real time from any convenient place where there is an Internet connection. Formulate the needs of outlets and purchase goods in 3 clicks, print labels and price tags with barcodes, making life easier for yourself and your employees. Build a customer base using a ready-made loyalty system, use a flexible system of discounts to attract customers during off-peak hours. Operate like a big store, but without the expense of specialists and server equipment today, and start earning more tomorrow.

Almost 90% of people surveyed admit that they prefer to avoid visiting stores where the number of people standing in line seems significant to them. A competent owner of a retail business should realize the importance of ensuring that there are no queues at all in his store, or that the crowding of customers at the checkout or in departments is minimal. Nine minutes in line is enough for the average customer to change his mind about making a purchase in a store! What follows from this? – If you want to lose your client, “accumulate” queues!

It turns out that a queue of three people is psychologically comfortable for any customer, and anything longer will cause negative reactions in customers. This means that any crowd of buyers above the norm of three people requires intervention. Long waits at the checkout counters cause complaints and dissatisfaction among customers; they leave the store without waiting their turn and without paying for their purchases, which means you can be sure: a person who values ​​his time will not return to this store.

Queues always evoke negative associations for each of us, and since fewer and fewer customers will visit your store due to constant queues, the loss of turnover will become more and more noticeable. Experts advise calculating the optimal number of cash registers for customer service based on the calculation - one cash register per 150 square meters of store area.

In order to competently “deal” with the consequences – queues in a retail store – you first need to understand the reasons for their occurrence.

Reasons for the formation of queues

An experienced marketer will be able to determine the reason for the formation of queues easily, since there are several main reasons.

• Poor quality of service

As you know, the longest queues in stores appear in the evening, when most buyers rush to the stores to make necessary purchases. It is during such hours that a significant number of customers accumulate at the cash registers, most of whom are in a hurry. A “sluggish” cashier can be seen with the naked eye: he is not interested in quickly serving the store’s customers, he carries out all operations slowly, as if reluctantly. Naturally, visitors to your store will not be satisfied with the quality of such service, which means they will not want to come back here again. If the cashier of your store is elderly, then it is natural that he will serve customers more slowly than a young employee.

Also, the reason may lie in the fact that the cashier is a novice employee of a retail enterprise, and operations with a cash register have not yet reached the point of automation. To work at the cash register, it is necessary to choose stress-resistant employees who can work with any queue, will be able to find a common language with each client, and will fulfill all his requests. In any case, the speed of service at the checkout directly depends on the quality of the cashier’s work, and therefore this aspect should be given special attention. Slowness or fussiness of a cashier only causes irritation in store visitors, and you should try to avoid this.

• Equipment malfunction

The reason for slow customer service in the store's checkout area may lie in a malfunction or poor performance of the equipment. For example, when a POS terminal - a device for accepting plastic cards for payment - takes a long time to process a request from a bank, then not only the card owner, but also all store visitors standing in line have to wait for a “response”. Check the serviceability of the cash register, POS terminal, and barcode reader so that this equipment does not “slow down” the customer service process.

• Incorrect technological layout of the checkout area

More than 15% of the total time that a customer spends in a store is spent in the checkout area, which means it should be as convenient as possible for visitors. To do this, it must be initially correctly designed, and the equipment - shelving, display cases, cash register - must be correctly located. It is known that the flow of customers in the checkout area of ​​the store is always intense, there is a lot of turnover, which means that the racks in this area must be stable so that customers cannot accidentally break or drop them. Take care of the comfort of customers in the checkout area - they should not be cramped, they should not be “sandwiched” between the shelves. If the store has a large crowd of people at the checkout, try to provide an air cooling system, especially in the hot season.

Comprehensive trade automation at minimum costs

We take a regular computer, connect any fiscal registrar and install the Business Ru Kassa application. As a result, we get an economical analogue of a POS terminal like in a large store with all its functions. We enter goods with prices into the cloud service Business.Ru and start working. For everything about everything - maximum 1 hour and 15-20 thousand rubles. for the fiscal registrar.

• Saving store space

Often, businessmen try to expand the retail space of a store by reducing the cash register area. This should not be allowed, as this entails “crowddom” at the cash registers, which means that even the “normative” three people in line will look like a crowd of people from the outside, which will certainly scare off visitors. Do not skimp on the area of ​​the checkout area of ​​your store, since the main thing is the comfortable presence of customers in it.

In order to minimize queues in your store, pay attention to all of the above reasons for their occurrence, approach the issue in a comprehensive manner: change the layout of the checkout area, make the passage to it convenient, accessible, spacious; Organize the work of the service personnel properly, if necessary, conduct training or “educational” conversations and remember that it is the absence of a queue in front of the checkout that directly affects and contributes to the client’s creation of a good impression of the store and stimulates his desire to make a purchase.

How to deal with queues at the store?

1. Introduction of self-service checkouts

We have already discussed the benefits and significant positive effect of installing self-service checkouts in our article Self-service checkouts: is it worth implementing? In general, experts recognize the effectiveness of this method of “combat” queues in retail stores. By installing self-service cash registers along with regular cash registers, an entrepreneur will help to “cure” his retail enterprise from constant queues and crowds of customers. Of course, not every store visitor is ready to use a self-checkout; most often the younger generation uses such modern technological capabilities. But there is no doubt that the “hurriest” shoppers will not want to stand in line, but will prefer to pay for their purchases at the self-service checkout.

In addition, self-checkouts are more compact and take up several times less space than traditional checkouts. They help increase the throughput of the checkout center and reduce queues during so-called “rush hours” in the store.

2. Employee motivation

If the reason for the formation of queues in your retail business lies in the sluggishness of cashiers and their reluctance to quickly serve customers, do not rush to “say goodbye” to careless employees, because finding a good cashier today is not easy. The right solution here would be to properly motivate your employees to work at the cash register. For example, if a cashier does not see the difference between whether he serves 5 customers per hour or 20, then such an employee has no incentive to speed up the process of serving customers.

The first type of announcement is informative: the elevator is not working, the water will be turned off tomorrow, keep quiet. Typical informational advertisements suffer from impersonal construction, aggression, official language, lack of usefulness and lack of information.

The ads became convincing and stopped annoying. To achieve this I used the following rules:

Get straight to the point. An address like “Dear residents” makes it difficult to grasp the essence. If an advertisement hangs on a bus, everyone already understands that it is for passengers, but in a clinic it is for patients. The word “respected” is so worn out that it no longer has anything to do with respect. Write straight to the point: “The elevator is not working.”

Add benefit. People are not stupid: they understand the content of advertisements, even if they are poorly written. But ads won't work unless readers take the request seriously.

The reader thinks that the ad is not for him: “We work here, where else can we smoke?”, “I live in this yard and always park my car here.” To make your ad work, show the benefit to the reader: “Don’t park your car in the yard. Children play ball and can break the window.”

Get rid of exclamation marks. An exclamation point reflects a strong emotion. Two or three exclamation marks in a row - aggression. The number of exclamation points shows the degree of despair of the author, but does not affect the reader in any way. Is it just annoying:

Add an actor. Typical advertisements, like good guerrillas, do not reveal their authors. The maximum they offer is the signature “Administration”. Therefore, in the advertisements there is no one who “does not release products,” “allows entry only in shoe covers,” and “checks plumbing equipment.”

This approach blurs responsibility. The reader does not understand to whom he will be guilty if he breaks the rule. Therefore, the reader should not follow him. Compare: “Upon entering, show your pass to the security officer. Administration" and "Upon entering, present your pass to the security officer. Head of security V.V. Taranin. Tel.: (495) ...".

Write in human language. Many people think that in order to be respectable, advertisements should be written in formal language. This is wrong.

A good ad is written simply and in a humane way. It’s easier to read and everyone understands it. Remove “produced,” “given,” and “carried out” from the announcement.

Show you care. A good announcement not only prohibits or warns, but also suggests the right path. Not just “no entry without shoe covers,” but also “free shoe covers at the entrance.”

A simple, thoughtful announcement without any red tape is a feast for the heart.

Whether you are selling in a retail store or online, the art of communicating with potential buyers is very important.

For Internet sales, this is primarily telephone sales.

It is important to ensure that the impression that the seller makes on others is good. And if in retail this impression is determined primarily by the appearance of the seller, then when talking on the phone it is very important what and how you say, in what tone and with what mood.

Customers should always be able to know who served them well or poorly. In retail, this is indicated by a badge with the name of the seller; during a telephone conversation, it is customary to introduce yourself at the very beginning of the conversation.
Often sellers and managers are simply panicky about the reaction like “No, I’m just looking” or when making a cold call “We don’t need anything.”

And it’s natural if the seller starts the conversation with the phrase: “Hello, you did the right thing by coming to our store. We have the best selection, great prices. With us you will definitely find everything you need and will be pleasantly surprised at our prices. By the way, what do you choose? Let me help you…” then the buyer will most likely run away from such a store.

In sales, those phrases are effective that, firstly, sound sincere and natural, and not far-fetched and stereotyped, and secondly, the first words of the seller should be about the client, and not about him, his store, product, service, etc. .d.

When developing algorithms for working with clients for Sales Departments, you always need to listen to how salespeople communicate with clients. All new phrases must be natural for employees, otherwise they simply will not pronounce them or refuse to use them.

The most valuable words and phrases for attracting attention are found in live speech and are found in direct communication with the buyer.

To establish contact with your interlocutor – both in person and over the phone – you need to understand that “attracting attention” does not mean selling. This means gaining the right and opportunity to exchange information with a potential buyer. If you follow this principle, then no one will try to “cram” as much information about everything into the first phrase as possible - about yourself, about the company, about the product or services; the dialogue becomes more natural and does not scare away the potential client.

Examples of phrases to attract clients

Typical statements depending on the function of the seller

Interrogative behavior (identify customer needs):

• Which color do you like best?
• What do you think about this thing?
• Isn't it a convenient thing?

Explanatory behavior:

• It seems to me that you doubt that...
• Do I understand you correctly...?

Help and support (dispel doubts, overcome internal resistance; if necessary, reassure):

• If I were you, I wouldn't hesitate...
• I'm sure you won't regret it...
• You have great taste...
• It suits you very well...

Position of understanding (listen carefully in order to speak at the right moment):

• I understand you perfectly. My niece (sister, brother, friend) has the same problems. They found such a solution (a suitable product is offered)…
• Why should you spend extra money? Take this model here. And it fits better and you save...

Please note that the list of typical statements does not include the classic: “What interests you?”

The seller needs to clearly understand the basic rule - the buyer must first become interested in the product. That is, the seller must feel when the buyer needs help, understand when his eyes are fixed on a certain product (or when he picked up the product), and only then approach it. Without a clear certainty that the client has a question, you should not approach him and offer your help.

The obsessive phrase “What are you interested in?”, with demanding and impatient intonations in your voice, scares people away from your store. In the future, they are unlikely to want to come to such intrusive sellers again.

Nothing harms the image of a store more than “heavy” staff that puts pressure on the customer.

Unsuccessful and tactless remarks from the seller

Replies from the seller -> Psychological reaction of the buyer (hidden or explicit)

• What are you interested in? -> What's your business? How do I know what will interest me?
• Can I help you? -> Do I look like a wretched person? Can't handle it myself?
• Should I show you something? -> Am I blind? I won’t see it myself?

• What you need?
• What do you want to watch?
• What will you buy? -> Am I in a store or being interrogated by an investigator?

• Have you already chosen the product you need?
• Have you found it yet? -> And I’m in no hurry! If you don't have time, I can go to another store.

The professionalism of the seller lies in clearly feeling the client, his needs and requests, being able to present the product on time, and guiding the buyer through all stages of the sale.
Remember that the better you take care of the comfort of your customers and do not annoy them like annoying flies, the more profit they will bring!

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