‘Third of self-checkout supervisors receiving verbal abuse from shoppers’

A third of self-checkout supervisors end up receiving verbal abuse from shoppers multiple times a week, claims a new study. 

Non-scanning of items was found to the most common misuse of self-checkout systems by shoppers in the study while 51 per cent of those surveyed said they believed all losses came as a result of malicious customer behaviour. 

According to a research by the University of Leicester on behalf of ECR Retail Loss based on 6,000 retail workers, most staff managing self-checkouts in supermarkets ‘cannot cope’ with the number of machines they run. 

For 84 per cent of supervisors surveyed, they believed one to six machines per member of staff to be the most suitable number. 

However, the study found that 38 per cent are currently expected to manage seven or more while almost two thirds admitted to being overwhelmed by this. 

“While correlation does not equal causation, it would seem likely that as staff members have to deal with a greater number of machines and associated alerts and problems, levels of customer frustration are also likely to grow, which in turn could spill over into violence and verbal abuse,” University of Leicester emeritus professor and report author Adrian Beck said. 

“The research has highlighted how important people are in this process,” Beck added.

“But if they are to be successful, they must be given a manageable workload, receive high-quality training, be supported with technologies that help them to focus upon the customers, transactions and events that matter, and operate in a space that is well designed, and above all, enables a zone of control to be maintained.”