Your turn at the box office with. Queues in your store: how to avoid crowding of customers at the checkout. Name in English

There are very few studies on the problem of queues in the world, while in Russia there are practically none. Yes, actually, why are they needed? The solution seems obvious: "There is a queue, open another cashier, put the cashier there." However, the situation is changing, retailers' margins are no longer the same, customers are dear to them, but staff is even more expensive, because each employee needs to be paid a salary.

Oddly enough, the first to talk about the need for automated solutions to combat queues in Russia was a small and medium business, but not at all large networks caring for high technology in the trading floor.

It was small companies that approached us with a question whether we can create a technology for controlling the formation of queues in retail outlets. So it happened that we investigated the problem of the appearance and movement of queues, and at the same time revealed and confirmed many very interesting facts.

Fact 1. Customers are predisposed to create a queue

When one of the largest international H&M chains entered the Russian market, its top management was proud of the queues. When talking about H&M, the network showed pictures of huge queues in Japan. It would seem that such negative information could scare away buyers. However, no.

Each of us loves to buy the same as the others. If there are people somewhere, then we will like it there too. This is psychology. Who wants to go to an empty store or a deserted cafe?

And looking around the trading floor with purchases in our hands with a cursory glance, we often unconsciously get up exactly at the cash register where there are already people, and we simply do not notice an empty one.

Fact 2. Choosing a checkout intuitively, the buyer is almost always mistaken

Most people are right-handed, and this leaves an imprint on their thinking. American researchers have shown that the right-hander intuitively prefers to stand on the right and walk on the right. I am not a brain researcher, but our observation of trading halls stores fully confirmed this feature of people's behavior.

The left checkout is often empty, and the queue is always longer at the right one. One queue to all cash desks at once - good way solutions to this problem.

In addition, when choosing a checkout, the buyer almost always chooses the one that moves slowly but smoothly, and not the one that moves faster, but in jerks. Which is understandable, because the buyer does not have time to watch the cash registers.

By the way, a smaller quantity of goods in the baskets in front is also not a panacea, the process of movement of people slows down interaction with the cashier and payment more than scanning the goods. The machines for accepting money, which are practiced in Russia "Auchan" and "Perekrestok", are a good way to increase the throughput of cash registers.

Fact 3. The behavior of buyers in the queue is similar to the maneuvers of motorists on the road: congestion is created by "checkers" and "roadsiders"

It's not a secret for anyone that motorists themselves are partly to blame for traffic jams: "roadsiders" build in forward, slowing down the movement from behind, as well as those who decided to change lane, deciding that the other is going faster.

The flow rate is reduced during maneuvers. The same happens in the queue: those who stood at the cashier for a long time and decided to run across, as a result, detain themselves and those around them. Those who took the queue and then came up with a full cart is not worth talking about.

Fact 4. The buyer experiences negative emotions after an average of 6 minutes 30 seconds in the queue

In his decisions, the buyer is inconsistent: he loves places where there are many people, but does not want to stand for a long time. His loyalty to the store begins to drop sharply at about the seventh minute of standing in line.

After about 6 minutes and 30 seconds, the customer is struck by the following thought: "Next time I'll think about whether to go here or not." This was shown by our simple survey. The critical threshold, after which some of the customers leave the store, occurs at the tenth minute of waiting.

However, the waiting time is different for different stores. With a cart in a hypermarket, people are willing to wait longer, in non-food retail - less. Understandably, a pair of T-shirts or sneakers are easier to put in place and go somewhere else. And the mood of the buyer largely depends on the assortment of the store, it is not a shame to stand behind an exclusive.

At the same time, store management, as a rule, notices the problem of queues in the store no earlier than a year and a half after the opening of the outlet. The presence of a large number of customers is initially perceived as a plus, and they begin to think about solutions to increase the checkout traffic much later.

Fact 5. Retailers prefer the queue to entertain rather than eliminate

For the sake of fairness, it must be said that there are fewer queues in saturated markets. At the same time, many large Western chains took care of this problem much earlier than Russian ones (they introduced, in particular, a single queue and automatic payment machines).

Nevertheless, now one of the most common ways to deal with the negative consequences of queues in Europe and America is to entertain the buyer:

• First, the mirrors at the checkout (the buyer is busy looking at himself and not getting too angry),
• Secondly, a TV with music channels or news.

Fact 6. Store employees are not interested in solving the queue problem

Often, the scale of the queuing problem at the point of sale may be simply incomprehensible to the business owner. It often happens that store management sees its main task in cost optimization and is unlikely to spend time counting the number of people in the queue and customers who have left. After all, the results of such a study will lead to the store manager having to explain to the owner the need to hire additional staff, which does not fit in with the optimization course.

In practice, this usually leads to the fact that the business owner does not know about the problem until some time after it appeared, being in the store during rush hour.

Fact 7. In Russia, the service is better, but people are also more patient

Residents of Russia are very patient, and they seem to be used to queues here. But this applies only to the older generation. The overwhelming number of people in Russia, especially the younger generation, categorically dislikes and does not accept queues.

Oddly enough, it is in Russia that retail offers customers a better service than in Europe. Most of the shops are open late, some are generally round the clock, they have no days off, as well as lunch breaks. A European is no stranger to the fact that after being late at work, he will not get to the supermarket in the evening, and on Sunday everything will be closed.

And life in most European capitals is more measured than in Moscow. They don’t want and cannot wait with us, so we see a free niche in the capital market, which will allow us to implement and bring to the market automated solutions that allow us to control the number of queues at the checkout and, if necessary, call additional personnel.

Fact 8. Small and medium-sized businesses will outstrip large chains in the fight against queues

As a rule, any technology in Russia is first introduced by large retailers, be it self-checkout counters, security systems or staff motivation. However, as we can see, in this case most of all is in development automated technologies that allow you to track queues at the checkout, it is the medium-sized business that is interested. At his request, we have developed a queue detector that allows you to count customers in the queue and signals that it is time to open another checkout.

The demand for such technologies has arisen from small chain stores "near the house" and brick-and-mortar retail outlets... And there is an explanation for this: small shops are not always able to withstand price competition with networks. At the same time, expensive video analytics systems existing on the market are not available to them. And here is the customer loyalty gained thanks to good service and faster shopping is their real competitive advantage.

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From July 1, 2017, all cash registers must send electronic versions of receipts to tax office... Banki.ru decided to confirm or deny numerous predictions about the imminent death of small trade in Russia from the mandatory transition to online cash registers.

Drive instead of tape

On February 1, 2017, an amendment to Law 54-FZ “On the Application cash register equipment". Now small and medium businesses have to get used to working with online cash registers or receive fines in the amount of 8ph5% of the total profit. Term for addiction and purchase new technology given - for different categories trade enterprises- from six months to one and a half years.

Trade and service industry on the doorstep drastic changes... From February 1, 2017, the traditional cashier's receipt is officially transferred to the form of mandatory electronic data. They will be kept by the fiscal data operator and the tax office. What difference does this make for buyers and sellers?

Already on July 1, 2017, all cash registers are required to connect to the Internet and send electronic versions of checks to the tax office. To do this, instead of the well-known electronic control tape (EKLZ), instead of the well-known electronic control tape (EKLZ), the cash register should have a fiscal drive - a device for encrypting and protecting fiscal data. The information from the fiscal accumulator will be transferred to the tax authority by an intermediary - the operator of fiscal data (OFD). Additionally, in addition to the paper receipt, the owner of the cash register equipment (CCP), upon the buyer's request, is obliged to send electronic version check to the address Email or subscriber number.

The new legislation on CCP recognizes only those devices that not only print a receipt, but also transmit information about each transaction to the tax authority (through the OFD) as cash registers. These devices are called online cash registers.

All legal entities and individual entrepreneurs who re-register with CRE are required to submit only new devices for registration. This rule is valid from February 1, 2017 . Those who had old-style devices are obliged to change them to new ones just before July 1 . It is from this date that the transfer of data to financial operators begins.

To whom the law is not written

Evgeny Luchin, a leading lawyer at European Legal Service, notes that strict reporting forms are, in fact, equated to cashier's checks... In turn, automated system for the formation of strict reporting forms is an integral part of cash registers: that is, the obligation to transfer information to operators of fiscal data is also for those using SRF.

54-FZ gives the right to some subjects entrepreneurial activity do not apply CCP until July 1, 2018. Such an opportunity is available for organizations involved, for example, in the sale of valuable papers, fair trade. The complete list is described in paragraph 2 of article 2 of the law "On the use of cash registers". Individual entrepreneurs engaged in activities and issuing strict reporting forms to customers can also be guided by this date.

Today there are a number of categories of individual entrepreneurs and legal entities that will not have to apply the CCP at all. Who are these lucky ones?

These are entrepreneurs and organizations carrying out the following activities:

• sale of newspapers and magazines, provided that the share of the sale of newspapers and magazines in their turnover is at least 50%;
• trade on retail markets, fairs, in exhibition complexes, as well as in other areas designated for trade;
• distribution trade of food and non-food products;
• sale of ice cream, soft drinks in bulk in kiosks;
• trade in kvass, milk, vegetable oil, live fish, kerosene from tank trucks; he pushed seasonal trade in vegetables, including potatoes, fruits and melons;
• reception from the population of glassware and waste materials, with the exception of scrap metal;
• realization of products of folk art crafts.

There is one more exception to general rule- persons operating in remote areas. There is no obligation for them to transfer fiscal data to the operator. At the same time, the main criterion for remoteness, determined by the Ministry of Communications and mass communications RF, - the population, which should not exceed 10 thousand people. Each Russian region will determine the list of remote areas independently.

How much?

In accordance with the innovations, even those entrepreneurs who do not yet use cash registers are required to purchase online cash registers by July 1, 2018 and send information to the tax service in a way that established by law... Until July 1, 2017, there is a transitional period: you can use old equipment, however, only upgraded CCPs are allowed before registration. From July 1, 2017, they will completely switch to new order work with KKT two categories of entrepreneurs - working under the general and under the simplified taxation system.

“Now, to carry out the registration procedure for the cash register, it is enough to go to a special Internet resource, create Personal Area and go through the online registration procedure. The innovation significantly reduces the time spent, and also greatly simplifies the registration procedure itself - there is no need to personally contact the tax office. For this operation, you only need to create an EDS - electronic digital signature", - says Konstantin Khanin, lawyer of the legal department of HEADS Consulting.

Accordingly, in connection with Law 54-FZ, each point of sale must be equipped with the Internet. The advantage is that if the Internet stops working, the drive saves the receipts and sends them to the Federal Tax Service immediately after the connection is restored. The expert believes that difficulties for trade enterprises will be caused by the change concerning checks and forms of strict accountability. It lies in the fact that now the amount of data that must be present in a fiscal document will increase.

Comparative analysis of the cost of electronic control tape(EKLZ) and fiscal accumulator (FN), according to UniCredit Bank

* For entrepreneurs on UTII, Article 4.1 of 54-FZ provides for a period of 36 months, however, such fiscal accumulators are not produced as of 04.21.2017 (according to experts, they will not be able to produce such in 2017).

** Indicated is the average market cost of the service "Maintenance of cash register per year".

The price of switching to online checkouts will vary from 30,000 to 60,000 rubles per checkout. Due to the innovations, there is no need to use the services of the centers Maintenance, and the price of the required agreement with the fiscal data operator will not exceed 3-4 thousand rubles.

Konstantin Khanin believes that for small businesses the new trade rules are more harmful than positive. Since the changes are related to the conversion of old equipment or the purchase of an online cash register, such entrepreneurs will incur significant costs, and their profits will hardly be able to cover such costs.

Nevertheless, Khanin is sure that it still makes sense to lead a small trade business under the new rules. “The main thing is to do everything in good faith, observing legal norms, since fines for non-compliance with the requirements of the law can become significant expenses for business,” the lawyer recalls.

Average cost of purchase and maintenance of KKT, according to UniCredit Bank

(Items 2, 3, 6 and 7 are optional costs, the rest are mandatory costs.)

The matter will not be limited to the expenses for the cash registers. One of the main goals of the law is to improve tax collection, which, accordingly, will increase business costs. This will especially affect small businesses, which will first have to incur expenses on reforming the entire payment system, and then pay more taxes.

Now, as you know, all domestic business in compulsory the order is transferred to online cash registers, which transmit data on sales to tax authorities in almost real time. This is a very important step for Russia. In short, for the first time in history, the state will be able to clearly see what is happening in our economy, and to see it immediately, and not after a year, when all the rough reports will finally reach the ministries. You can read more about this here:

The problem, however, is that data from entrepreneurs' cash registers does not go directly to the tax office, but through the FDO, fiscal data operators. One of these operators, the Element group (e-OFD brand, e-ofd.ru), wrote me a letter with a very alarming assessment of the situation.

While some operators, the same "e-OFD", for example, build their business on the collection of a subscription fee with entrepreneurs, others initially enter the market in the hope of gaining access to the information they collect. The danger here is obvious: few of us will willingly entrust letters to the postman, who will carry them for free, but at the same time read what we write to our relatives and friends.

I repeat, some operators state quite openly: they are interested in data that can be extracted from an endless stream of checks pushed through at other people's cash registers. They are ready to either sell this data, or immediately use it for their own benefit.

The main rival of small businesses, if the soft word “rival” is appropriate here, are large retail chains. Actually, in some cities, networkers have already put small businesses on the brink of extinction - it is very difficult to compete with the giants. If networkers can get accurate sales data on specific streets, small businesses will have a hard time: they will actually find themselves in the position of guerrillas fighting at night against special forces with night vision devices. By night vision devices, I mean, as you can imagine, information that experienced analysts are able to extract from sales data.

Imagine: you are individual entrepreneur, keep a small coffee shop with a bakery on a not very passable street. You love what you do, you yourself roast coffee beans, knead the dough for fresh baked goods, and in the morning a line of local residents and employees of nearby organizations lines up. Business allows you to support yourself and your family in the income that suits you.

From July 1, 2017, you began to transfer all data on checks to the tax office through the operator (OFD), which kindly provided you with this service for free or almost free of charge: in exchange for permission to dig into information about your sales.

Soon, the FDO receives a request from a chain of coffee shops: on which streets are coffee and related products selling especially well? The street on which your establishment is located is highlighted in green in the report, and the manager makes the obvious decision - to open a chain coffee shop in the house next to you.

No matter how hard you try, a significant part of your customers will leave you, since the networkers have a well-known name, and beautiful branded cups, and an assortment, and a lot of everything that a small business usually does not have. And if a networker pays close attention to you, he may well decide to finish you off by setting prices by 100 rubles lower, and keeping them at this level for six months or a year - as long as it takes so that your profit is no longer enough to pay rent and salaries. For large retail chains, there is nothing special about bringing a point to payback for a long time: they have orders of magnitude more money than a single entrepreneur.

Tellingly, the networkers themselves do not leak their data to anyone. They either created their own FDOs, or scattered the data across several independent FDOs, choosing those who do not trade data.

At this point, an experienced reader may have a logical question: where are the regulatory authorities looking. I will disappoint you. It is absolutely legal to sell other people's data, the law on the use of cash registers directly stipulates that OFDs can use fiscal data to transfer them to third parties in an impersonal form (paragraph 2, paragraph 9, article 4.1 of the CCP Law):

Fiscal data operator can process fiscal data in statistical or for other research purposes, subject to the mandatory depersonalization of such fiscal data.

Moreover, some market participants are asking to remove the condition of depersonalization so that even more accurate data can be traded: not “20 hectares of coffee were sold on Švejk Street”, but “Sidorov and Sons coffee shop”, st. Švejka, 13, sold 17 hectares of coffee ”. Since large retail chains have powerful lobbying tools, while small entrepreneurs have almost no such tools, I would not be surprised if such an amendment is successfully adopted in six months or a year.

By the way, the fiscal data market is already entering internet monsters, owners social networks and search engines. These tough guys perfectly understand what BigData is and how it can be analyzed with good benefit for themselves.

If nothing changes in the market, chains will continue to squeeze small businesses, with all the ensuing negative consequences in the form of deterioration in the quality of goods, higher prices and the destruction of jobs. FDOs, accordingly, will try to profit from the sale of information, since it is more profitable to trade information than to charge a modest monthly fee for technical services.

Let's go back to the coffee shop from the example. Let's say retail chains found your street unpromising, and you, working 14 hours a day, managed to significantly increase your profits. What do you think will happen next month?

The next month, the owner of the premises in which your coffee shop is located will drop by and say that since your profits have increased, you now have to pay him more for rent. Twenty percent from additional The landlord will leave the income to you, take 80% for himself - because he knows exactly the volume of your sales and can accurately calculate the amount that you are able to pay him. In "e-OFD" I am told that real examples of such "entrepreneurial spirit" of landlords have already appeared.

To summarize

If you are an entrepreneur, please remember that any data about your business can be used against you. Nowadays, hiding from the state is stupid, you will have to connect cash registers to the Internet in any case. Therefore, take care to connect to an operator that does not trade in data. For example, to the very "e-OFD", on the basis of the information from which I am writing this article.

If you are a legislator, consider whether it is generally right to allow anyone other than the government to access sensitive information such as sales data, even in anonymized form. Modern techniques working with BigData allows good analysts to easily correlate information about the volume of sales on a certain street with the stores located on that street. This puts small businesses at a huge disadvantage.

At this point, some, perhaps, will say that they do not need a small business, they are quite satisfied with networkers. I will briefly answer this with two well-known arguments:

1. Good quality in the industries in question, you can get it only in small and medium-sized businesses, since large retail is sharpened for making a profit, and the maximum profit is incompatible either with quality, or, in general, with the interests of society.

2. Small business generates quite a few taxes, but it creates a huge number of good jobs. This is important: jobs in the next 10-20 years promise to become a very scarce commodity.

The queue at the checkout is one of the serious problems retail stores... What can be done so that the queues at the checkout counters do not interfere with the development of the trading business?

High-quality and comfortable service is an important component of the trading business. There are no trifles in this area. According to British researchers, each of us spends on average about a year in queues. Nowadays, when every minute is valuable, such time spent does not add to the attractiveness of a trade enterprise.

The presence of traffic jams can also reduce the flow of customers because, having seen a traffic jam, a potential buyer will not even enter the store. And if it does, it will quickly leave it 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 the queues at the checkout.

The study says that a queue of three people seems to be comfortable to the buyer, with an increase in the number, psychological discomfort arises. This means that you need to closely monitor the congestion at the checkout and immediately take certain measures so that the queues do not grow.

Why are there queues in stores?

1. The cashier is not quick 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 slow, the line at the checkout will grow, the number of dissatisfied customers will grow. The next day, they most likely will not go to this store.

Working at the checkout requires automatism, which needs to be worked out. In addition, the cashier should be friendly and calm when dealing with clients. Otherwise, irritation will grow on both sides.

2. Equipment fails or is set to a not very high speed mode

Not everything depends on the person. Sometimes a technician can also create additional queues. Breakdown, malfunction, low speed of processes - such moments need to be foreseen, and if they appear, they must be 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 cardholder has to wait for a "response", but also all the visitors in the queue of the store.

3. Incorrect location of the checkout area

The checkout area is where shoppers spend more than 15% of their time. It is necessary to take care of the comfort in this area. From the very beginning, it is necessary to correctly design the checkout area, correctly positioning the cash register, showcases, racks. It should be comfortable enough in the checkout area, the racks should stand firmly so that it would not be possible to break or drop them. In this place, it is necessary to provide additional ventilation so that in hot weather the conditions of stay in it are quite comfortable.

4. Rational use of the store territory

When striving to save each meter of the trading area, the checkout area must not be reduced. If there is not enough space, then even a three-person line at the checkout will look like a large mass of people.

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

What else can be done so that the queues at the cash desks are not an obstacle to the development of the trading business?

1. Place self-checkout counters

According to the results of individual studies, it is the installation of self-service checkouts that is considered one of the main methods of “fighting” queues. Of course, not every buyer will immediately cope with this payment method, but the gradual accompaniment of this process by trade 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-checkout counters take up less space. Thus, the traffic of buyers in the checkout area will be faster.

2. Train and motivate employees

Even if most cashiers are inexperienced or slow-moving employees, don't rush to fire them. Inexperienced need to be trained, to attach mentors to them from among experienced cashiers. Additional forms of motivation should be applied to the slow-moving. Material stimulation works best in such cases.

3. Use additional cashiers during peak hours

Use experienced cashiers during peak hours. Strengthen cash registers with employees of other departments, for example, through the involvement of sales consultants. Train sales consultants, motivate their work with additional payments. it good motivation for employees, within the framework of working hours, they will be able to perform both their direct duties and additional functions. Your employees will become “all-rounders” and their value will increase. And the queues at the checkout will become smaller.

4. Supply additional cash registers

Weigh your financial opportunities and if the cash registers are really not enough, purchase additional cash registers. Such an acquisition is necessary when there are really not enough cash registers. Conduct research, analyze customer traffic in the daytime and in the evening. And if the problem with queues is only a shortage of devices, buy and install them. This will relieve cashiers, reduce queues at the checkout and attract additional customers.

5. Work through staffing table

Optimize your store's staffing table. Pay attention to what time more cashiers are needed and it is at this time that you invite an additional number of cashiers. Employment by shifts or part-time is possible. Show all cashiers during peak hours. And for those who are comfortable with part-time work, invite for a specific time. Then, during the hours of a special influx of buyers, the queues at the checkout will be small. And at other times the cash desks will not be idle.

6. Engage buyers all day long

Queues at the checkout during peak hours will be small if the store provides additional measures to attract customers at other times. For example, you can announce discounts in the morning, and promotions at lunchtime. The flow of customers will be redirected, and the queues at the checkout will be even throughout the day.

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

Tatiana Zagumennova

 

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