This seems counterintuitive, but it actually reduces waiting time.
The researchers found that it takes a certain amount of time to serve each customer: on average, 41 seconds to say hello, pay, say goodbye and pick up purchases, and three seconds to check each item. So it turns out that a line of several people with fewer items will actually move slower.
Let's do the math. It will take about six minutes to list 100 products from one customer. If you stand in a line of four people, each with 20 items, it will take almost seven minutes to be served.
If you add up this time, a lot accumulates in a year. Richard Larson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates that Americans collectively spend 37 billion hours a year in queues.
Turn left
Most people are right-handed and tend to turn right, so the line on the left may be shorter.
Pay attention to the cashier
If you notice that the cashier is particularly talkative, talking to customers or commenting on products, avoid such a line.
Study other buyers
It is important not only the number of people in front of you, but also their age and purchases.
For example, serving older people takes longer. They don't always know how to handle a credit card and generally slow down the line.
Also pay attention to the number of different goods in the baskets of the people in front. It is faster to sell six identical products than six completely different ones.
Choose a line that leads to multiple cashiers
Such queues usually occur at airports and banks, but can also be found in supermarkets. They move the fastest because the person at the front of the line approaches the first available employee.
In addition, when we stand in a line like this, we feel a sense of relief because we no longer have to choose which cashier to approach and doubt our decision.
Avoid queues with barriers
If the cashier cannot see the entire line, for example, a wall or shelf blocks the view, customers will have to wait longer Masha Shunko, Julie Niederhoff, Yaroslav Rosokha Humans Are Not Machines: The Behavioral Impact of Queuing Design on Service Time..
Speed up your service
- Place barcoded items at the cashier.
- When you buy clothes, immediately remove the hangers and take out the labels so that the cashier can scan them faster.
Remember that the expectation is only in your head
To some extent, waiting is just a psychological state. Most people tend to exaggerate their wait time in line by 36%.
Additionally, shoppers pay more attention to the length of the line rather than how fast it moves. When choosing between a slow-moving short queue and a fast-moving long one, we often choose the former, even if the waiting time in both queues turns out to be the same.
Also remember that the wait will go faster if you are distracted by something, such as talking to other customers or reading.
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 surveys public opinion, 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 with finished system loyalty, 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. Competent business owner retail must 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. Calculate optimal quantity Experts advise using cash registers for customer service based on the calculation - one cash register per 150 square meters of store area.
In order to competently “fight” the consequences - queues in retail store– first you 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 the 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 positioned. 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
Let's take regular computer, we 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 retail space store by reducing the checkout 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 cash register that directly affects and contributes to the creation of good impression about 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 trading 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 throughput cash register, reduce queues during so-called “peak 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 decision here it will be right to 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.
A familiar picture: a large fashion store, there are many cash registers, but only one is open and there is a long line next to it. How to minimize such situations that negatively affect customer loyalty and save money at the same time?
Clothing and shoe stores usually have large areas, large number cash desks and personnel responsible for their work and helping customers make a choice and make a purchase. However, despite all of the above, we regularly encounter queues there. As a rule, although the store has several stationary checkout islands, only two or three POS terminals are actually operational. As a result, the retailer loses revenue out of the blue, since a large percentage of customers, seeing that they have to spend time waiting in line, immediately go to competitors.
There are several reasons for this problem:
- The staff is not always properly motivated to promptly serve the customer;
- there are often more cash registers than workers trading floor;
- the process of selling clothes itself takes longer than, for example, making a purchase in grocery store. Therefore, the average customer waiting time at the checkout, even with a small number of items, is quite high.
Implementation of technology as a solution to store problems
Is it possible to fight this phenomenon? As our practice shows, yes, quite. To do this, it is enough to revise the company’s policy regarding personal motivation of staff and introduce special technologies that make it possible to serve customers more efficiently and quickly. So, modern equipment Retail automation allows you to abandon the classic stationary cash register island in a store, where customers gather, in favor of payment acceptance points dispersed throughout the sales area, of which there may be more than regular cash registers.
The very pleasant fact is that you won’t have to pay extra for this modernization. Moreover, there is a high probability that the retailer will also save on equipment.
Today, almost every clothing store is equipped with mobile devices, for example, data collection terminals (DCs) or tablet computers, with which you can scan products and obtain information from a database. They will become the main tools in the converted store.
Using a mobile device, the sales assistant will be able to complete the client’s purchase by scanning the barcodes of the selected items and invite him to the payment acceptance point.
What does it look like?
From a technical point of view, everything looks like this: fiscal registrars (FR) or cash registers(KKM), but simply receipt printers connected to the store’s local network. Having generated a check for mobile device, the consultant sends it for printing to any convenient DF. It is to this island that he leads the client, who can pay for the purchase there. And the consultant will remove anti-theft tags from the goods and pack them.
It is important to note that if you use this solution, you must ensure that the selected cash register software worked identically both on a regular POS terminal and on a mobile device.
It’s clear that even after upgrading the store, you won’t be able to get rid of stationary cash registers completely - you’ll have to leave at least one in case of emergency situations, for example, a technical failure, as a result of which it stops working local network store.
Advantages of the solution for retailers
What are the benefits of modernization using express cash registers for a fashion store:
- The retailer refuses conventional POS terminals, which saves money allocated for its purchase and space, since he does not have to rack his brains about where to place large system units. Instead, only a fiscal registrar and a bank terminal will be located at the payment point - both devices are very small, so they take up very little space. This means that the island itself may be tiny.
- In the store, you can organize the correct motivation of employees: for consultants, if the number of sales affects their pay, it will be profitable to serve as many customers as possible. This means they will strive both to provide advice that will lead to a purchase, and to make payment and register the goods. By the way, the personal responsibility of sales floor employees also increases, which is also beneficial for the retailer.
- Upgrading a store will not require lengthy and complex training for store personnel. Accordingly, you will not have to incur additional expenses associated with it.
Confidentiality Agreement
and processing of personal data
1.General provisions
1.1. This agreement on confidentiality and processing of personal data (hereinafter referred to as the Agreement) was accepted freely and of its own free will, and applies to all information that Insales Rus LLC and/or its affiliates, including all persons included in the same group with LLC "Insails Rus" (including LLC "EKAM service") can obtain information about the User while using any of the sites, services, services, computer programs, products or services of LLC "Insails Rus" (hereinafter referred to as the Services) and in during the execution of Insales Rus LLC any agreements and contracts with the User. The User's consent to the Agreement, expressed by him within the framework of relations with one of the listed persons, applies to all other listed persons.
1.2.Use of the Services means the User agrees with this Agreement and the terms and conditions specified therein; in case of disagreement with these terms, the User must refrain from using the Services.
"Insales"- Limited Liability Company "Insails Rus", OGRN 1117746506514, INN 7714843760, KPP 771401001, registered at the address: 125319, Moscow, Akademika Ilyushina St., 4, building 1, office 11 (hereinafter referred to as "Insails" ), on the one hand, and
"User" -
or individual having legal capacity and recognized as a participant in civil legal relations in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation;
or legal entity, registered in accordance with the legislation of the state of which such person is a resident;
or an individual entrepreneur registered in accordance with the laws of the state of which such a person is a resident;
which has accepted the terms of this Agreement.
1.4. For the purposes of this Agreement, the Parties have determined that confidential information is information of any nature (production, technical, economic, organizational and others), including the results of intellectual activity, as well as information about methods of implementation professional activity(including, but not limited to: information about products, works and services; information about technologies and research works; information about technical systems and equipment, including software elements; business forecasts and information about proposed purchases; requirements and specifications of specific partners and potential partners; information related to intellectual property, as well as plans and technologies related to all of the above), communicated by one party to the other in writing and/or electronic form, clearly designated by the Party as its confidential information.
1.5. The purpose of this Agreement is to protect confidential information that the Parties will exchange during negotiations, concluding contracts and fulfilling obligations, as well as any other interaction (including, but not limited to, consulting, requesting and providing information, and performing other instructions).
2. Responsibilities of the Parties
2.1.The parties agree to keep all confidential information received by one Party from the other Party during the interaction of the Parties, not disclose, disclose, make public or otherwise provide such information to any third party without the prior written permission of the other Party, except for the cases specified in the current legislation, when the provision of such information is the responsibility of the Parties.
2.2.Each of the Parties will do everything necessary measures to protect confidential information using at least the same measures that the Party uses to protect its own confidential information. Access to confidential information is provided only to those employees of each Party who reasonably need it to perform official duties for the execution of this Agreement.
2.3. The obligation to keep confidential information secret is valid within the validity period of this Agreement, the license agreement for computer programs dated December 1, 2016, the agreement to join the license agreement for computer programs, agency and other agreements and for five years after termination their actions, unless otherwise separately agreed by the Parties.
(a) if the information provided has become publicly available without a violation of the obligations of one of the Parties;
(b) if the information provided became known to a Party as a result of its own research, systematic observations or other activities carried out without the use of confidential information received from the other Party;
(c) if the information provided is lawfully received from a third party without an obligation to keep it secret until it is provided by one of the Parties;
(d) if the information is provided at the written request of the authority state power, other government agency, or organ local government in order to perform their functions and its disclosure to these bodies is mandatory for the Party. In this case, the Party must immediately notify the other Party of the received request;
(e) if the information is provided to a third party with the consent of the Party about which the information is transferred.
2.5.Insales does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by the User and does not have the ability to assess his legal capacity.
2.6.The information that the User provides to Insales when registering in the Services is not personal data as defined in Federal law RF No. 152-FZ dated July 27, 2006. “About personal data.”
2.7.Insales has the right to make changes to this Agreement. When changes are made to the current edition, the date of the last update is indicated. The new version of the Agreement comes into force from the moment it is posted, unless otherwise provided new edition Agreements.
2.8.By accepting this Agreement, the User understands and agrees that Insales may send the User personalized messages and information (including, but not limited to) to improve the quality of the Services, to develop new products, to create and send to the User personal offers, to inform the User about changes in Tariff plans and updates, to send the User marketing materials on the subject of the Services, to protect the Services and Users and for other purposes.
The user has the right to refuse to receive the above information by notifying in writing to the email address Insales -.
2.9. By accepting this Agreement, the User understands and agrees that Insales Services may use cookies, counters, and other technologies to ensure the functionality of the Services in general or their individual functions in particular, and the User has no claims against Insales in connection with this.
2.10. The user understands that the equipment and software used by him to visit sites on the Internet may have the function of prohibiting operations with cookies (for any sites or for certain sites), as well as deleting previously received cookies.
Insales has the right to establish that the provision of a certain Service is possible only on the condition that the acceptance and receipt of cookies is permitted by the User.
2.11. The user is independently responsible for the security of the means he has chosen to access his account, and also independently ensures their confidentiality. The User is solely responsible for all actions (as well as their consequences) within or using the Services under account the User, including cases of voluntary transfer by the User of data to access the User’s account to third parties under any conditions (including under contracts or agreements). In this case, all actions within or using the Services under the User’s account are considered to be carried out by the User himself, except in cases where the User notified Insales of unauthorized access to the Services using the User’s account and/or of any violation (suspicion of violation) of the confidentiality of their means of accessing your account.
2.12. The User is obliged to immediately notify Insales of any case of unauthorized (not authorized by the User) access to the Services using the User’s account and/or of any violation (suspicion of violation) of the confidentiality of their means of access to the account. For security purposes, the User is obliged to independently safely shut down work under his account at the end of each session of working with the Services. Insales is not responsible for possible loss or damage to data, as well as other consequences of any nature that may occur due to the User’s violation of the provisions of this part of the Agreement.
3. Responsibility of the Parties
3.1. The Party that has violated the obligations stipulated by the Agreement regarding the protection of confidential information transferred under the Agreement is obliged, at the request of the injured Party, to compensate for the actual damage caused by such violation of the terms of the Agreement in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation.
3.2. Compensation for damage does not terminate the obligations of the violating Party to properly fulfill its obligations under the Agreement.
4.Other provisions
4.1. All notices, requests, demands and other correspondence under this Agreement, including those including confidential information, must be in writing and delivered personally or through a courier, or sent to email to the addresses specified in the license agreement for computer programs dated December 1, 2016, the accession agreement to the license agreement for computer programs and in this Agreement or other addresses that may subsequently be specified in writing by the Party.
4.2. If one or more provisions (conditions) of this Agreement are or become invalid, then this cannot serve as a reason for termination of the other provisions (conditions).
4.3. This Agreement and the relationship between the User and Insales arising in connection with the application of the Agreement are subject to the law of the Russian Federation.
4.3. The User has the right to send all suggestions or questions regarding this Agreement to the Insales User Support Service or to the postal address: 107078, Moscow, st. Novoryazanskaya, 18, building 11-12 BC “Stendhal” LLC “Insales Rus”.
Publication date: 12/01/2016
Full name in Russian:
Limited Liability Company "Insales Rus"
Abbreviated name in Russian:
LLC "Insales Rus"
Name in English:
InSales Rus Limited Liability Company (InSales Rus LLC)
Legal address:
125319, Moscow, st. Akademika Ilyushina, 4, building 1, office 11
Postal address:
107078, Moscow, st. Novoryazanskaya, 18, building 11-12, BC “Stendhal”
INN: 7714843760 Checkpoint: 771401001
Bank details:
From July 2018, the transition must be completed by SMEs from the trade and catering sectors that have hired employees and work patent system taxation or using a single tax on imputed income (UTII). The last wave of cash reform will take place in 2019 - individual entrepreneurs without hired employees will join it.
For selling goods or providing services without a cash register, the entrepreneur first faces a fine. Depending on legal organization enterprise, it will range from 25 to 100% of the revenue received without the use of equipment. In case of repeated violation, companies face a ban on conducting business for 90 days.
How ready are companies for new requirements?
According to Rosstat at the end of 2017, there were 5.308 million SMEs in Russia, including individual entrepreneurs. Thus, by July 2018, approximately 18% of such companies should switch to working with new cash registers, NAFI estimates. The survey showed that 42% of participants in this stage of the reform complied with the requirements: 36% use online cash registers, another 6% use both old and new-style cash registers.
Online cash register Evotor 10 (Photo: evotor.ru)
Every fifth company participating in the second stage of the reform (23%) planned to buy and install an online cash register during May, another third will do this no later than July 1. At the same time, among companies obliged to switch to online cash registers before July 1, a third (32%) stated that they do not plan to purchase an online cash register.
Why are companies in no hurry to install new cash registers?
Entrepreneurs are not ready to install new equipment, partly because they do not know about such a law. Of those who do not yet use online cash registers, 15% have not even heard that this is necessary, NAFI found out. “Now the main task is to reach out to every entrepreneur and explain the progress of the reform, what exactly needs to be done,” Andrey Shubin, executive director of Opora Russia, explained to RBC.
51% of companies required to install new cash registers from July 1, 2018 have a negative attitude towards the reform. Most dissatisfied with the reform individual entrepreneurs— about 60% of them have a negative attitude towards it.
Businesses do not understand why they need to spend on new technology and massive digitalization of all processes, explained Vladlen Maksimov, president of the Association of Small-Format Trade. It is more difficult for small entrepreneurs to cover these expenses than large networks: cash registers for them cost approximately the same, but the number of receipts and the amount of purchases from small businesses is much less, Maksimov noted. Market participants surveyed by RBC estimated the cost of one cash register at 20-30 thousand rubles.
The expenses of entrepreneurs at the second stage of the reform are covered by a tax deduction in the amount of up to 18 thousand rubles. for each cash register. However, only 51% of entrepreneurs knew about the deduction at the time of the survey. In addition, more than half of the reform participants consider this measure insufficient. A businessman's expenses include not only the purchase of the cash register itself, but also its maintenance: this equipment never works perfectly.
All manufacturers offer checkouts below tax deduction, Andrei Romanenko, founder of Evotor, told RBC. The cheapest cash desks can only transmit data to the Federal Tax Service, he explained. At the same time, “smart terminals” also provide access to various applications, wallets, and payment instruments, that is, they make business more advanced, Romanenko noted.
What problems have cash reform already had?
The transition to new devices back in 2017 was accompanied by problems. Six months before the start of implementation, several large retailers included in the National Association of Chain Trade (Chitay-Gorod, Econika, Henderson and others chains) asked the government to defer the mandatory registration of cash registers due to a shortage fiscal drives. The Ministry of Industry and Trade refused to grant them a deferment. Now there is no shortage, but it must be taken into account that most entrepreneurs are planning to switch to new equipment in last days, Shubin noted.
During the first wave of reform, there were companies that imposed on sellers additional services for installation and maintenance of cash registers, Shubin said. It is important that now such companies cannot take advantage of the legal illiteracy of entrepreneurs, added RBC’s interlocutor.
Those who installed cash registers also encountered problems at the first stage. At the end of December 2017, the largest retailers and gas station networks throughout Russia were unable to operate due to a failure in online cash registers. The problem was related to a software error in cash register equipment from JSC Shtrikh-M - one of largest suppliers on the market. For example, retail chain Magnit, which operates Russia's largest chain of stores, lost 1 billion rubles due to this failure. revenue, according to the company itself.
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