Serve yourself: Self-service becoming more pervasive in retail world

By Daniel Rademacher Feb 2, 2012, 3:06 GMT

Berlin - Consumers increasingly are discovering that if they want service - anything from having their sandwich wrapped at a bakery to checking in for a flight at the airport - they have to provide it themselves.

The customer is becoming a sort of employee who doesn't get a pay check, isn't in a union and needs no office space. Many industries have embraced self-service, which saves costs. Some people find it practical, others feel that it not only makes the effort of completing a transaction even more burdensome, it is eliminating jobs.

Guenter Voss, a sociologist in Germany, says consumers are increasingly required to be 'working customers.'

There are numerous examples of self-service in the marketplace. Food stores provide stations where people can bag their own groceries, petrol stations require people to pump their own fuel and post offices have stamp machines that calculate postage. Online shops are designed from the ground up on the principle of self-service. The customer does his or her own searching and fills out all the necessary information.

Companies have names such as 'customer orientation' to describe the restructuring of the buying process and the broad palette of processes that customers have to do themselves. For the company this typically means fewer employees are needed to provide the services.

Bjorn Weber of Planet Retail, a commerce information service, has calculated how much companies can potentially save by implementing things such as self-service cash registers. 'The check-out procedure at a store takes up on average at least 65 per cent of personnel costs,' said Weber. 'That's a large parameter.'

Unions are closely observing the developments in the area of self-service. Ulrich Dalibor, an official with the 2.1-million-member German trade union ver.di, which represents employees in more than 1,000 trades and professions, said the union is skeptical over the increase in self-service.

'It contributes to the devaluation of the check-out procedure and the image of the job of cashier and therefore wages determined on a pay scale can be circumvented,' Dalibor warned.

Representatives of the German wholesale association see that position as nothing less than hostile toward technology. 'On a locomotive these days we no longer have a worker shoveling coal into the engine,' said Heribert Joeris, chief executive of the association, adding that some activities become redundant. 'In exchange new ones arise in other areas. The entire chain of commerce lives on the notion that customers will take over tasks and want to take over tasks.'

Michael Gerling, chief executive of a commerce research institute in Cologne, agrees. 'The self-service cash registers cannot comprehensively replace those with a cashier,' he said. 'This type of self-service is only supplemental.'

Weber noted that recently there has been a technical development that we're likely to see more of. In the future customers will be able to use an app to scan the item when they put it into their shopping carts and when they are done shopping the app will calculate their entire purchase.

Voss sees advantages not only for businesses. 'It is critical that they recognize the new potential and deal with it correctly,' he said. An example he cited is the participation of customers in product development, which is known as crowd sourcing and takes place primarily over the internet. A group of people collaborates, for example, on designing a new company logo, submits improvements for the design of a sport shoe or creates a new popular hamburger.

However, when consumers become the producers, marketers and sources for ideas, the companies must adjust to a new form of customer loyalty and react accordingly, said Voss. Companies are on the cusp of many new possibilities in the area of customer relations. 'It's not only about reducing costs. They also will be able to realize profit through direct comprehension and understanding of the customer.'