Scan & Go— An improved Costco shoppers experience at checkout
Here I am improving the shopper checkout experience at Costco Supermarket by getting rid of the long queues at the supermarket using an improved self-checkout and a netted tunnel scanning system which is better than the current technologies.
Discovery
As the name indicates, a self-checkout system is a self-operated checkout machine used in supermarkets to automate the checkout procedure and prevent long lines at the counter. The method works by allowing customers to scan their own items and make payments without the assistance of a store employee or cashier. However, as easy as this may appear to the untrained eye, the process of employing self-checkout devices is not without its flaws.
Problem
How might we improve the Costco customer experience and eliminate long lines at checkout point?
Understanding the Limitations
The solution boils down to the existing Self-checkout system with some improvements to reduce the key pain point customer experience while using the system. The limitations includes the following;
- Costco is solely interested in ready-to-use technologies.
- Ensuring that all products are being paid for.
- Everyone should be allowed to purchase their goods, but they should not be forced to utilize the solution.
Building Empathy
Costco as one of the world’s largest retailer who currently utilize a self-checkout system which still generates long lines. With guerilla research, I understood some of the motives of my personas.
Design Solution
Create a mobile application which addresses the customer experience at checkout to enable them get items of their choice and go off Costco mall seamlessly with less contact.
Solving the problem
Ideation
- Cart Scanner: Incorporating a new technology that allows you to self-scan goods in Costco mall as you add them to your cart. When the shopper is through buying, they can go to the express payment lane, where a register will check the contents of the consumer’s cart, accept money, and send them on their way.
- Order Ahead + Pickup: Create a pre-order and pick-up service on Costco’s website or through a mobile app. Then customers may pick up right outside the store, reducing total foot traffic and possibly eliminating the necessity for cashiers.
- Scan + Go: Scanning item’s barcode with mobile app and item is added to the cart with option to increase quantity. App sums up the total and customer pays up and a QR code will be generated to tap out of Costco mall.
Ideas Difference
Moving ahead with the idea(Scan + Go) with the most checks based on the criteria considered.
diagram
Validating product ideas with user testing
Test Success Metrics
- How the shoppers feels about the checkout experience.
- If the mobile app reduces the issue of long lines
- If the checkout process solved the problem of excessive human contact
Incomplete Solution
After analyzing the behavioral response from the tests;
I realized that the solution failed to handle the case of un-scanned items which could result to loss due to unpaid goods.
Back to the whiteboard
Discovered the key solution to capture the un-scanned items is having a verification system at the exit. Just like the millimeter wave and baggage scanners we have on the airport. We could have a simplified version of these tools in Costco mall to detect only items’ barcodes registered on Costco database which haven’t been paid for.
Additional feature
For a quick user transition to the new checkout process, a tour guide can be included to ease navigation.
Validating modified idea with testing
Here are some of the impact the feedbacks showed;
- Increase in user retention and rapid onboarding, a better way of encouraging the users to use the new checkout process
- Adding new feature like the millimeter wave and baggage scanner at the exit reducing loss on unpaid items.
Key Learnings
- Testing my ideas as a way to not only validate decisions but also to get constant feedback ( testing with close friends) and also to confirm that the idea is realistic.
- Focused on the shopper persona first and put a pause on the seller flow; this helped us to break down high level problems into smaller chunks and also to spend enough time obsessing about the problem and not the product. Once an idea came up for the shopper persona. Immediately, the seller persona was considered.
