Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The Booths supermarket chain has closed almost all outlets that implement an automated service system, aka self-service with the help of robots.
Of the total 28 stores run by the company, 26 of them will return to employing human cashiers in stores in Northern England.
Booths is believed to be the first UK supermarket to move away from the use of self-service robot checkouts, which have become increasingly common in recent years.
“We believe colleagues serving customers provide a better customer experience and therefore we have taken the decision to eliminate self-checkout in most of our stores,” the company said, quoted by the BBC, Tuesday (14/11/2023).
Speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, Booths managing director Nigel Murray, said customers had frequently told the company that the self-scanning machines they had in stores were slow, unreliable and impersonal. The use of payment robots actually creates many obstacles for consumers.
“We stock quite a lot of loose items – fruit, vegetables and bread – and as soon as you do a self-scan with those items, you have to get visual verification of them. But on the one hand some customers don’t know the difference for example the type of apple ,” Murray said.
“We love talking to people and we’re very proud that we’ve largely shifted to a place where our customers are served by humans, so as opposed to artificial intelligence, we chose actual intelligence.” he added.
Booths will maintain self-checkout at its two existing stores in the Lake District to meet customer needs during busy periods such as the end of year holidays.
The origins of self-service cashiers began with the invention of the automated teller machine in 1967.
Decades later, the self-service cash register was invented by David R Humble, who was inspired by the long lines of grocery store cashiers in south Florida in 1984.
Cash registers became popular in the 1990s and in 2013, there were more than 200,000 stores worldwide and the number reached 325,000 in 2021.
But many shoppers remain unconvinced, with one petition calling on Tesco to stop replacing humans with machines, gaining almost 250,000 signatures.
Pat McCarthy, who started the petition, previously said he wanted more human cashiers because “you can’t talk to a machine”.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
(fab/fab)