A familiar picture: a large fashion segment store, there are many cash desks, but only one is open and a long queue lined up near it. How to minimize such situations that negatively affect customer loyalty and save money at the same time?
Clothing and footwear stores usually have significant areas, a large number of cash desks and staff responsible for their work and helping customers make a choice and make a purchase. However, despite all of the above, we regularly encounter queues there. As a rule, although the store has several stationary checkout islands, only two or three POS terminals really work. As a result, the retailer loses revenue out of the blue, as a large percentage of buyers, seeing that they have to spend time waiting in line, immediately go to competitors.
There are several reasons for this problem:
- the staff is not always properly motivated to promptly serve the customer;
- often there are more cash desks than employees of the trading floor;
- the actual process of selling clothes takes longer than, for example, making a purchase at a grocery store. Therefore, the average waiting time for a customer at the checkout, even with a small number of things, is quite high.
The introduction of technology as a solution to store problems
Is it possible to fight this phenomenon? As our practice shows, yes, quite. To do this, it is enough to revise the policy of the enterprise in terms of personal motivation of the staff and introduce special technologies that allow better and faster service to customers. Thus, modern retail automation equipment makes it possible to abandon the classic stationary cash island in the store, where buyers gather, in favor of payment acceptance points dispersed throughout the trading floor, which may be more than conventional cash desks.
Very pleasant is the fact that you do not have to pay extra for this upgrade. Moreover, it is likely that the retailer will also save on equipment.
Today, almost every clothing store is equipped with mobile devices, for example, data collection terminals (TSD) or tablet computers, with which you can scan goods, get information from the database. They will become the main tool in the converted store.
Using a mobile device, the sales assistant will be able to complete the customer's purchase by scanning the barcodes of the selected items and invite him to the point of payment.
What does it look like?
From a technical point of view, everything looks like this: fiscal registrars (FR) or cash registers(KKM), but simply receipt printers connected to the store's local network. Having generated a check on a mobile device, the consultant sends it to print to any convenient FR. It is to this island that he brings the client, who can pay for the purchase there. And the consultant in the same place will remove the anti-theft tags from the goods and pack it.
It is important to note that in the case of using this solution, you need to make sure that the selected cash register software worked identically both on a regular POS-terminal and on a mobile device.
Of course, even if you upgrade the store, you won’t be able to completely get rid of stationary cash desks - you will have to leave at least one in case of emergencies, for example, a technical failure, as a result of which it will stop working the local network shop.
Advantages of the solution for the retailer
What is the benefit of modernization using express checkouts for a fashion store:
- The retailer refuses conventional POS-terminals, which saves money allocated for its purchase and space, since he does not have to puzzle over where to place large system units. Instead, only a fiscal registrar and a bank terminal will be located at the payment point - both devices are very small, so they take up very little space. This means that the island itself can be tiny.
- In the store, you can organize the right motivation for employees: if the number of sales affects their remuneration, it will be beneficial for consultants to serve as many customers as possible. This means that they will strive both to provide advice that will lead to a purchase, and to make a payment and arrange the goods. By the way, the personal responsibility of the employees of the trading floor is also increasing, which is also beneficial for the retailer.
- Modernization of the store will not require long and complicated training of the store staff. Accordingly, you will not have to bear the additional costs associated with it.
urgent problems of society "(P. Heine).
"The most harmful thing is not ignorance at all, but knowledge of a hell of a lot
things that are actually wrong" (F. Knight, economist).
INTRODUCTION
I wrote this article because the concept of "queue" has become a tool in the ideological struggle of the enemies of the "USSR" project.
In recent years, in Russia, and not only in Russia, heated debates have increasingly flared up about whether “the Russian people did the right thing by renouncing socialism.” Leaving aside for now the question of whether the people actually “refused” or whether this decision was made for them, let’s consider this, without a doubt, bright bogey of “queues”, which the market liberals victoriously brandish, exposing the queue as a blatant example of the “inefficiency of the Soviet system”. Under the pressure of very obvious facts, they often admit that they say, yes, they lived well, but the queues spoiled everything and therefore “such a country is not needed.” At the same time, dishonest people are trying to slip on the layman a primitive line of reasoning, like a felt boot: queues are a consequence of a centralized economy, a market is needed to eliminate them, and the market, in turn, is incompatible with socialism and the USSR. What follows is a conclusion about the correctness of the destruction of socialism and the destruction of a great power.
From this article, the reader will be convinced that the above "female logic" of marketers is nothing more than a brazen and dishonest manipulation that has nothing to do with economics or just common sense.
In reality, the queue, as a social, economic and organizational phenomenon, is much more complex than they try to imagine.
WHAT IS A QUEUE?
Interestingly, not everyone is clearly aware that the queue has always existed in all societies, and not only in the USSR, as they try to convince us. For example, it functions perfectly now in the West. There it is called the "peak-load problem" and has long been solved by theoretical economics (see, for example,), and by human practice.
The idea that the market destroys queues altogether is just a blatant fraud, not so much smart as cunning and dishonest people pursuing their own very selfish goals. In fact, always and everywhere - the queue is evidence of a limited resource, no more and no less. Carts at the crossing, cars at traffic lights, people in the dentist's office or canteen - all this is evidence of a limited resource.
A queue is a state that occurs when serving one client takes more time than the time it takes for the next client to arrive at the service point - cashier, retail outlet, hairdresser, baggage control ... In other words, the queue is a situation where the next service order arrives before the previous visitor has been serviced.
Everyone agrees with this. But there are two types of queues: the first - when, simply speaking, what they are waiting for does not end and “this” will be enough for everyone, albeit not immediately, and the second - when “this” ends quickly and is not enough for everyone. That is, the second is a case of the so-called "deficit". Let us emphasize this point - "deficit" is a fundamentally different kind of queue. Although they look the same from the outside - there is a line of people one after another.
And now, as they say, watch your hands. The fact is that "deficit" as a noticeable social phenomenon began to appear in the USSR from the end of the 70s, if you do not take the period of wars. The queue of the first type has always existed - both in the USSR and in all other countries.
Ideological opponents, as a rule, argue that there were always queues in the USSR, this was its inevitable part, therefore ... in the USSR there was always a deficit and an inefficient economy. But this is far from true. I repeat once again - if you do not take the periods of wars, economic recovery and the initial period of Industrialization, then the situation with queues, in general, was quite good somewhere until the 80s. That is, for decades the Soviet economy functioned successfully and the supply worked, on the whole, not bad, especially considering that all this happened after a series of destructive wars and in an exceptionally hostile environment.
We will not consider the phenomenon of "scarcity" in this article - because it is inherently completely different from the queue. "Deficiency" (absence of something) can be without a queue at all. In addition, the very existence of a "deficit" does not mean the weakness of the economy, but only the wrong distribution or other organizational and social phenomena. The second type of queue is a social barometer, no more and no less. It is an indicator of a very serious imbalance, when one has a lot, and the other has nothing. Not necessarily economic, but quite possibly social or criminal imbalance, an indicator that law enforcement agencies can no longer contain the pressure of crime, which has grown together with the authorities.
As for the economy, in some cases the economy is efficient, and in some cases it is not. In general, the deficit is very great evil for public consciousness, it was not in vain that it was used to manipulate society and destroy the country.
Let's not take the Stalinist times either - this is a completely different story, when the Stalinist economy worked as planned - without wars and forced development, there were practically no queues and shortages of necessary goods. We will also not take the period of the last years of the USSR - the queues and deficits of this period should not go through the department of the economy, but through the department of law enforcement agencies, since they had not an economic, but a clearly planned nature of sabotage before the planned destruction of the country.
If you try to consider the phenomenon of queues in the USSR for all periods of its existence, you will get not an article, but a monograph of hundreds of pages, of little interest to the average reader. In this article, we will consider the period of the “mature” USSR until the beginning of the transition period of the mid-late 70s, when the administrative elite of the Brezhnev period began to leave for the world and the country increasingly began to fall into the hands of semi-mafia party clans, which eventually led to to Perestroika. This was done because the Soviet System in the form in which it was planned and built, from the late 70s - early 80s, began to be gradually destroyed. And we are interested in what it was according to the plan and what advantages and disadvantages it had.
There were queues in the period under review, but as a rule, they were of the first type - due to insufficient throughput of service points. From the point of view of the layman, it would seem that everything is nowhere simpler - if servicing a client takes such time, then you just need to increase the number of service nodes or service points. But the simplicity of this solution is deceptive, and the treatment can easily turn out to be much worse than the “disease” itself. The fact is that queues often make a lot of economic sense - they provide significant benefits, providing more profit and better resource management than in the case of getting rid of queues.
In an ideal world and under ideal conditions, there should not be a queue, but even then, only if the flow of customers is strictly stable in time. In real life, everything is different - the flow of customers is fickle, then twenty will come at the same time (for example, a bus came up), then no one at all for half a day. At the moment when the number of service orders exceeds the capacity of the serving node, a queue appears. Then, when there are fewer customers, the queue dissolves without a trace, as if it never existed. This process is repeated cyclically. For example, on a working day, as was usually the case in the USSR, there was no one in the store, and immediately after work there was a queue almost to the door.
The same thing happens in any country in the world, even in the West so beloved by the "reformers" - half-hour and even hour-long queues in the supermarket on Friday and Saturday evenings are a completely ordinary thing and, despite the constant caricatures in the newspapers, nothing changes there either. And it won't change. The queue is a signal of exceeding the full load of the system, a lack of redundancy, but it is far from a fact that it makes sense to increase this throughput.
Let's make a simple argument - if even in the most super market economy the owner of the service point increases the number of staff, then there will be no queue during peak hours, but the hours when there are few customers and the staff is idle en masse will “eat up” all profits.
In reality, the cost of employees' salaries is far from everything. Here it is necessary to add an additional number of service nodes, for example, cash registers, the cost of square meters, which will go not to place goods, but to the cash desk, as well as the cost of managers who will manage additional staff ... Naturally, with an increase in the number of staff, the price of the service will also increase, because the buyer pays for everything. Even without mathematical calculations, it is clear that there is a certain optimum between the queue and downtime of personnel and equipment. It is the demand for profit maximization that drives the diner to keep his customers in line, at least occasionally, during the hot lunch hour.
Practice has shown that in reality it is technically impossible to organize work without queues in such a way that the required number of personnel appear at their work precisely at rush hour, although there have been attempts to solve this problem.
Now let's look at the situation through the eyes of the client. After all, he constantly chooses where to go - where there is a queue, but the price of a service or product is lower or to where there is no queue, but the price is more expensive. The client knows that in one place he can get a service (for example, a haircut) for 10 coins, but without a queue, and in another for 5 coins, but after standing in line or in a third place, the price will be 3 coins at all, but already with a crush. Where will he go client, will depend on how and how much the client values his free time.
It may be objected to me that this can only be so if all clients have the same income, then it will really be a matter of free time. True, the main reason, other things being equal, that determines the behavior of the client will be his income. Therefore, for example, the director of a corporation or an expensive lawyer will not stand in line at a cheap hairdresser, but will overpay a triple price even for the same quality of haircut. However, this requires serious social stratification with all the disadvantages that accompany this, for example, crime. For example, in the mature USSR, everyone's income was relatively equal - the official decile coefficient (excluding subsidies) did not exceed 4.4, and when recalculated taking into account subsidies to the low-income, it was 2.2. Now - 15 . By the way, the decile coefficient under Stalin was about 6 and there were significantly fewer queues, unless, of course, we take the war years.
The queues in the USSR were generated by egalitarian principles - i.e. concern for low-paying citizens and much less than in the West, the number of shops and outlets. The second aspect "for some reason" is not paid attention at all. Only the physical redundancy of goods and places of their distribution can objectively contribute to the predominance of queues of the first type. But this is not our Russian case. The USSR is not a rich West, which is located in a much more optimal climate, plus it robs the whole world, as a result of which it has many hands free from production and can afford such waste. To optimal control economy, obviously, has nothing to do with it.
Look, now trade in Russia, by objective Russian standards, is so hypertrophied that it absorbs most of the profits of real production, undoubtedly increasing further degradation. manufacturing sector. The only way out here is to return to the situation with queues, but at the same time to transfer two-thirds of the people currently employed in trade, mediation and finance to the real sector of the economy. When production starts to work and is optimized, then the queues will begin to disappear, as it was, for example, after the War and at the end of Industrialization. Is the queue evil? Yes, of course it's evil. But, alas, in this case the alternative is even worse.
Many patriotic citizens even declare that any government that does not fight excess trade will not be a government of national salvation. That is, the queue within reasonable limits is not an overwhelming, but a stimulating factor for production.
From the above, the obvious conclusion follows that, in general, queues increase the welfare of society, because they provide a more efficient loading of resources, which compensates for the loss of time caused by standing in queues. Of course, if the situation is not brought to the point of absurdity, as was purposefully done during the destruction of the USSR. But then the mass queues arose for a completely different reason - as a result of economic sabotage, "cashed" rubles from the manufacturing sector poured into trade, because of which the money supply increased sharply, and prices remained the same, so people with "hot" money swept away everything.
It is strange to blame the Soviet System for this - it has already been practically paralyzed by a series of blows.
Marketers argue that standing in lines is a waste of precious time. According to them, a limited resource - and this is a "deficit" - should be given not to those who stood in line earlier, but to those "who work more" (the word for those who have more money is so cunningly juggled - these concepts are far from identical ) and needs more support. Well, of course, who else to support the ideologists of the "free market", not the poor?
In the USSR, the idea was diametrically opposed - the system was tuned not only to optimize the load of labor and distribution resources, but, above all, to ensure equal access to basic goods, with little dependence on personal income. For the “marketer”, the task is simply not set in this way, the main thing for them is to ensure the decisive advantage of individuals with money over everyone else. And at what price it will cost the whole society, how much it correlates with human concepts of morality and justice - they care the least.
To illustrate the essence of the USSR approach and the usefulness of a certain number of queues for the entire society under socialism, I will give an example of an economic experiment that P. Heine cites in his classic work. For convenience of presentation, I do not present his economic calculations.
So, in experiments to optimize the price of tickets in a 700-seat cinema at an undergraduate college, revenues cover costs at a ticket price of $3.15. At a price of $2.50, there is a queue and the hall, of course, is 100% full. This is exactly the situation that existed in the USSR, when the prices for many products and tickets to cultural institutions (theaters, cinemas, museums ...) were subsidized.
However, everything changes if the goal is to get as much net proceeds from the screening of the film, so what will be the price? Answer: $5. If the price is $5, 500 tickets will be sold. Total revenue will be $2,500 and net revenue $300. The best ... can not achieve."
Please note the key point: with a maximum revenue of 200 (almost a third!) Seats in the cinema are empty. These are the people who will be cut off from the culture in order to maximize profits, but more on that later. But the most important thing in terms of efficiency is quite different: the market model is fundamentally incapable of ensuring the optimal allocation of resources. From 1/10 to 1/3 of the resource simply disappears.
Another very important point is that in the experiment under consideration, the cinema maximized its profit by significantly limiting access to the resource due to the high price. Yes, he won, but this means that in the entire social organism, where resources do not come from nowhere, someone else has lost significantly.
The bottom line here is that in any large system there are several levels of optimization, and "marketers", ignoring the rest, artificially single out only one level - optimization at the enterprise level, which dominates in a market economy, usually to the detriment of higher-level optimization. At the same time, local systems conflict with each other, spending huge resources on taking a piece from someone else, as was shown in the experiment above, and not agreeing at the level of the whole society.
It was on this that the USSR "left", this is precisely what explains its high efficiency - it was built as a single integrated system, where optimization was at the highest possible level. Moreover, sacrificing profits at the local level was conscious, because there was a larger gain from optimizing the distribution of resources at the level of the whole society.
In the USSR, the ticket distribution model (and trade is distribution and nothing else) would be solved as follows. The price of some tickets will be slightly lower than demand and will ensure the availability of tickets to everyone. Then the vast majority will rush into the queue for cheap tickets. The other part of the tickets will be made more expensive, but it will be on free sale. Finally, the third part of the tickets will be expensive, but always available and will be sold dearly up to last minute and then the price may go down. We will have a typical socialist model of trade. In this case, the second part will symbolize the Soviet co-optorg, and the third part - the market. Those who do not want to stand behind cheap tickets will go and buy them a little more expensive. If, on the other hand, the cooperative system is made more convenient - closer retail outlets, better opening hours, etc., then a significant part of the goods will go through the cooperative trade system. Such a system was extremely developed in the USSR during Stalin's time and was introduced at his insistence. Not surprisingly, there were few queues. By the way, the idea of cooperative trade at the state level and with the support of the state does not belong to Stalin, but to Lenin. Stalin simply implemented it very successfully, despite the fierce resistance of the “Leninist revolutionaries”.
The costs of appeasing society in the event of ideological incidents of which would many times exceed the losses incurred by the state by selling tickets at their cost. The current history of Russia has perfectly proved this.
And who loses as a result of incorrect optimization? The whole society loses, and very large. For the inevitable social stratification and isolation of a considerable number of people from benefits that are fundamentally inaccessible to them, they will have to pay with strong social tension, which results in epidemics of suicides, drug addiction, an epidemic of unmotivated cruelty and the unwillingness of the population to have children.
The cinema here is just an example, by the way, quite good. The fact is that the choice in this case was made by students, not the most wealthy part of the population - if a ticket costs $ 3, then a student can have something to eat for 2 and watch a movie, then for 5 he will have a choice - go to the cinema or have dinner . Generally speaking, 200 out of 700 people cannot both dine and have fun under a market system. And such a fairly significant layer of those who, in principle, will not be able to access social benefits above the minimum in a market economy will always exist. Naturally, the ratio will vary from 30% in the US to 90% in Paraguay, but again, it will always be. Do you think this is normal and natural? Well, then you will get wild street gangs, a lot of suicides, unthinkable for a "damned scoop", a sadistic boss, a close relative who has become a drug addict and other delights of the "free market".
Liberals point out that students and teachers paid with money, while in the USSR people "paid" with their time, which was all the more wasted. Yes, time is money when it comes to production. But the vast majority of the population stand in line outside of working hours.
Another thing is that if people live correctly and everything is in order with public morality and health, then the queues in general worsen the situation in society, since in general a person will have less time for his family, taking care of his health, for example, sports, and so on. . The person in line experiences unnecessary stress.
Just remember that in the "market economy" a person spends even more time chasing money, and it's better not to mention the stress experienced during this - stress in a moderate queue will seem like child's play. You just need to be clearly aware of how society pays if it chooses social model- with what it is "linked", what is its reverse side, paying for benefits?
And what happens if you raise the price, but do not add the amount of money, as the liberals propose? By itself, the increase in price means that, at the same wage, the consumption of the good will decrease, since a person will be able to buy this product less. But with a stable money supply the prices of other commodities should fall. If new money is not printed, then if consumption and production are equal, an increase in price will immediately cause a decrease in consumption, that is, there will be at least a slight overproduction, as happened in the case of a cinema. In other words, the efficiency of the economy will decrease, as part of the resources in the form of other over-produced goods will then be thrown into a landfill or service facilities will not be used.
Well, what about the liberals' argument that the additional profit received from the sale of milk at an increased price will be used to expand its production? Not everything is so simple - the profit received from the sale of milk can be used to expand production, if there are guarantees that this will lead to a further increase in profits. And why should they be? If the price of milk does not rise, then no one will invest in its additional production. You can certainly invest, but this profit was very small. In fact, this money cannot significantly increase milk production, since it was too small compared to the losses from overproduction. And in order to really increase milk production, huge investments were required at the state level. This is what the experience of today's Russia and all former socialist countries has shown, where much less meat and milk began to be produced.
By the way, the main increase in labor productivity in the USSR was associated not with the investments of the commodity producer, but with the state's investments in science and technology.
The queues of the first type in the USSR were economically beneficial, because they made it possible to save resources in the face of uncertainty about future demand. By the way, they are beneficial in the West as well.
We have a wonderful historical and economic experiment to test the null hypothesis with a huge statistical array of data. In place of the former countries of socialism, more than 24 states arose, which ALL liquidated socialism and the Soviet queues. They acted in a variety of ways. Some, such as Poland, applied shock therapy, others, such as the Czech Republic and Ukraine, acted very gradually. Therefore, there is no reason to say that these are the mistakes of the leaders, "distortions right idea market”, etc.
An analysis of the state of affairs in all (!) post-socialist countries showed that when the queues were eliminated, less meat and milk began to be produced. Everywhere . Amazing, right? For that fought for it and ran. This is about the efficiency of the economic system.
Wait, did the market economists' original hypothesis say that after the elimination of queues, the production and consumption of meat should have increased? It turns out that everything is not so. It would seem that one could conclude that the queue stimulated production.
But in reality, everything is noticeably more complicated - it was not the queue that stimulated it, it would just be ideal if it did not exist at all. Stimulated by the Soviet Economy, with a slight imbalance of which there were queues. This is the payment for her positive traits. Under socialism, there are crises, no matter what the Marxists claim, and the indicator of socialist crises is the turn. With a slight skew, this is a queue of the first type; in case of serious crises, queues of the second type appear - these are weak side of the Soviet System, although production is not disturbed in this case, if it is not artificially undermined. This is the strength of the planned Soviet system.
In the same way as social tension, crime, moral decline, mass ruin with a corresponding wave of social collisions - this is the payment for the pleasure of having a "free" market.
I can be accused of idealizing the queue. This is not true. I have experienced all the delights of standing in lines. Have you ever stood in line at Soviet time, asked me more than once? Yes, I personally stood many times - I had to carry sausage and other products from Moscow to Ivanovo. Unforgettable impressions, but not at all terrible, as they now want to present. The queue is a whole layer of culture.
But here's why it was impossible to organize the Swedish system with numbers - it was elementary to do it, it remained incomprehensible to me. At one time it seemed strange to me why it was so difficult to come up with a system of paper numbers. Although, by and large, why is this system with numbers and digital displays fundamentally better than the Soviet one? A little more expensive, that's all. And its "advantages" are visible only in small queues. If there are a lot of people, where will they sit and walk? There will still be a crowd. In the Soviet queue, it was also not necessary to stand with your back to the front. If there were benches, then it was possible to sit. You could get in line and go for a walk.
All this most likely could have been organized in the USSR, but the hands did not reach. The culture of queues had to be developed. Trade by orders could help a lot in this and it developed intensively. The packaging industry also developed... But then there was an urgent need for the ruling elite not to solve problems, but to make money on the "drain" of their own country.
Now to the question that the necessary products in the USSR were allegedly impossible to "get". This is an absolute lie - there was an alternative: the meat was in the store for 2 rubles, in the copy shop for 3.5 rubles, and in the market, for example, we have 4 rubles in Ivanovo. There were convenience stores. There you could buy to order, but paying 30% on top. Buy without queues - no problem! Finally, meat, like milk, could be eaten without a queue in any Soviet canteen. Although it was more expensive there than in the store - from 25 to 50%. For children, special funds were allocated to schools for meat and milk, and they received it in a fairly large amount. For infants, milk was distributed through dairy kitchens. Milk and meat have always been allocated to nursing mothers ... Naturally, there has always been an opportunity to buy it in a co-optorg or on the market. I emphasize: always.
So the "hungry, unnourished children" argument is just a dirty lie. At 100%. This looks especially disgusting against the background of the fact that in the current "Russia", according to official data from the Ministry of Defense, every third of the recruits (yesterday's schoolchildren) "suffers from a serious lack of weight", that is, simply speaking, a dystrophic. I affirm, as a doctor who worked in the USSR, there were no dystrophics there. Generally.
It might seem that the author considers the Soviet system of distribution ideal. No, it's not. I consider the Soviet economic system much more efficient and fair than all others, including the Western model. It is simply necessary to take the best from the Soviet system, take into account its shortcomings and mistakes, and move forward. It is possible that in the future the distribution system may even work differently. If New Russia manages to break through into a new post-industrial era, then large metropolitan areas will apparently be disbanded and settled, and a significant part of the primary production will be produced locally and there will be no great need for our usual method of distribution. Moreover, no one will incite consumer desires with advertising and similar effects on the brain.
A planned economy also destroys the queue, and often more effectively than a market economy. Under Soviet rule, the queue was an operational regulatory mechanism. The market economy has an advantage in the speed of response, but it is incomparably more costly than the planned one.
Neutralization options negative impact there were many queues, but the worst way out was purposefully chosen - this is the transition to a much less cost-effective and immoral capitalist market, which was implemented in today's Russia and the former countries of socialism.
S. Mironin
REFERENCES
1. (see the first option) http://vif2ne.ru/nvz/forum/0/co/217465.htm
2. Heine P. Economic way of thinking. www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/lib_thinking
3. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978STIN...8016549A
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6. McConnell K.P. and Brew S.L. 2007. Economics. M. Infra-M.
7. http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle_base.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/integratedsystemstalin.html
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11. Mironin S. 2005. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/
There are very few studies on the problem of queues in the world, and in fact there are none in Russia. Yes, in fact, why are they needed? The solution seems obvious: "There is a queue, open another cash register, put the cashier there." However, the situation is changing, the margin of retailers is not the same, buyers are dear to them, but the staff is even more expensive, because each employee needs to be paid a salary.
Oddly enough, the first to speak about the need for automated solutions to combat queues in Russia were small and medium-sized businesses, and by no means large networks that care about high technologies in the trading floor.
It was small companies that approached us with the question of whether we can create a technology for controlling the formation of queues in retail outlets. And so it happened that we investigated the problem of the emergence and movement of queues, and at the same time revealed and confirmed many very interesting facts.
Fact 1: Shoppers are prone to queuing
When one of the largest international chains H&M entered the Russian market, its top management was proud of the queues. Talking about H&M, the network showed photos of huge queues in Japan. It would seem that such negative information could scare away buyers. However, no.
Each of us likes to buy the same things as 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 at the cash desk where there are already people, but we simply don’t notice the empty one.
Fact 2. When choosing a cash register intuitively, the buyer is almost always mistaken
Most people are right-handed, and this leaves an imprint on their thinking. American researchers have proven that the right-hander intuitively prefers to stand on the right and walk to the right. I am not a brain researcher, but our observation of trading floors stores this feature of people's behavior is fully confirmed.
The left cash desk is often empty, and the line is always longer in the right one. A single queue to all cash desks at once - good way solutions to this problem.
In addition, when choosing a cash register, the buyer almost always chooses the one that moves slowly but smoothly, and not the one that moves faster, but in jerks. Which is quite understandable, because the buyer does not have time to watch the cash registers.
By the way, a smaller amount of goods in the baskets of those standing in front is also not a panacea, the process of people moving slows down interaction with the cashier and payment more than scanning the goods. The money-receiving machines that Auchan and Perekrestok practice in Russia are a good way to increase cash flow throughput.
Fact 3. The behavior of buyers in the queue is similar to the maneuvers of motorists on the road: traffic jams are created by “checkers” and “road cars”
It's not a secret for anyone that motorists themselves are partly to blame for traffic jams: "road cars" are built forward, slowing down traffic from behind, as, indeed, those who decide to change lanes, deciding that the other one is going faster.
The speed of the flow during maneuvers is reduced. The same thing happens in the queue: those who stood at the cash desk for a long time and decided to run across, as a result, detain both themselves and those around them. About those who took the queue, and then came up with a full cart, and it's not worth talking about.
Fact 4. The buyer experiences negative emotions after an average of 6 minutes 30 seconds in the queue
The buyer is inconsistent in his decisions: he likes places where there are a lot of people, but he does not want to stand for a long time. His loyalty to the store begins to plummet around the seventh minute of standing in line.
After about 6 minutes 30 seconds, the buyer is visited by such a thought: “Next time I’ll think about whether I should go here or not.” This was shown by our simple survey. The critical threshold, after which some of the buyers leave the store, occurs at the tenth minute of waiting.
However, different stores have different waiting times. With a cart in a hypermarket, people are ready to wait longer, in non-food retail - less. It is clear that a pair of T-shirts or sneakers is easier to put down and go somewhere else. And the mood of the buyer largely depends on the assortment of the store, it’s not insulting to stand behind the 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 outlet opens. The presence of a large number of buyers is initially perceived as a plus, and they begin to think about solutions to increase the throughput of cash desks much later.
Fact 5. Retailers prefer the queue to entertain rather than liquidate
In 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 (in particular, they introduced a single queue and payment machines).
Nevertheless, now one of the most common ways to deal with the negative consequences of queues in Europe and America is the entertainment of the buyer:
- First, the mirrors at the checkouts (the customer is busy looking at himself and not too angry),
- Secondly, a TV with music channels or news.
Fact 6. Store employees are not interested in solving the problem of queues
Often, the scale of the problem of queues at the point of sale can be simply incomprehensible to the business owner. It often happens that your main task store management sees it in cost optimization and is unlikely to waste time counting the number of people in line and departed customers. After all, the results of such a study will lead to the fact that the store manager will have 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 become aware of the problem until some time after it appeared, being in the store at "rush hour".
Fact 7. In Russia, the service is better, but people are 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 vast majority of people in Russia, especially the younger generation, categorically do not like and do 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 until late, some - even around the clock, they have no days off, as well as lunch breaks. A European is no stranger to the fact that if he is late at work, he will no longer go 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. We don’t want to wait and can’t, so we see a free niche in the capital market that will allow us to implement and bring to the market automated solutions that allow you to control the number of queues at the cash desk and, if necessary, call additional staff.
Fact 8. Small and medium businesses will outstrip large networks in the fight against queues
As a rule, any technology in Russia is first introduced by large retailers, be it self-service checkouts, security systems or staff motivation. However, as we can see, in this case, it is the medium business that is most interested in the development of automated technologies that allow tracking queues at the cash desk. At his request, we developed a queue detector that allows you to count the customers in the queue and signals that it is time to open another cash desk.
Demand for such technologies has arisen from small chain stores "at home" and brick-and-mortar 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 that exist on the market are not available to them. But the loyalty of customers won thanks to good service and speed of purchases - their real competitive advantage.
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Legal address:
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Lines at the checkout are a real problem for many retail store owners. Customers complain, leave, abandon purchases without paying for them, and you can be sure: now they are unlikely to return to your store. But do not despair! The Internet magazine "Business.ru" gives several basic rules for "fighting" queues at a trade enterprise.
Losing patience: why are queues bad?
British researchers have calculated: the average resident of Europe spends on average about a year in store queues! Also, according to public opinion polls, more than 40% of modern buyers admit that it is the presence of a queue in a store that can be a good reason to “pass by” a trade enterprise and change their intention to make a purchase in it. AT modern society When each of us counts every minute of time, waiting in line is a heavy burden for each person.
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Take control of sales and track the performance of cashiers, outlets and organizations in real time from any convenient place with an Internet connection. Form the needs of outlets and purchase goods in 3 clicks, print labels and price tags with a barcode, making life easier for yourself and your employees. Build a customer base with a ready-made loyalty system, use a flexible discount system to attract customers during off-peak hours. Operate like a big store, but without the cost of specialists and server hardware today, start earning more tomorrow.
Nearly 90% of the people surveyed admit that they prefer to avoid visiting stores where the number of customers standing in line seems to them to be significant. Competent business owner retail should be aware of the importance of having no queues in his store at all, or the accumulation of customers at the checkout or in departments should be minimal. Nine minutes in line is enough for the average customer to change their mind about making a purchase in the store! What follows from this? - If you want to lose your client - "save" the queue!
It turns out that a queue of three people is psychologically comfortable for any buyer, and anything more will cause negative reactions in customers. This means that any accumulation of buyers above the norm of three people requires intervention. A long wait at the checkouts causes complaints and dissatisfaction among customers, they leave the store without waiting for their turn and without paying for their purchases, which means you can be sure: a person who values his time will not return to this store.
Queues always evoke negative associations for each of us, and since there will be fewer and fewer customers visiting your store due to constant queues, the loss of turnover will become more and more tangible and significant. Experts advise to calculate the optimal number of cash registers for customer service based on the calculation - one cash register per 150 square meters of the store area.
In order to competently "fight" the consequences - queues in a retail store - you first need to understand the reasons for their occurrence.
Reasons for queuing
An experienced marketer will be able to determine the reason for the formation of queues easily, since there are several main reasons.
Poor quality of service
As you know, the biggest queues in stores appear in the evening, when most buyers rush to the stores to make the necessary purchases. It is during such hours that a significant number of customers accumulate at the cash desks, most of whom are in a hurry. A “sluggish” cashier can be seen with the naked eye: he is not interested in quick customer service of the store, he carries out all operations slowly, as if reluctantly. Naturally, visitors to your store will not be satisfied with the quality of such service, which means they will not want to come back here again. If the cashier of your store is elderly, then it is natural that he will serve customers more slowly than a young employee.
Also, the reason may lie in the fact that the cashier is a novice employee of a trade enterprise, and operations with a cash register have not yet reached automatism. To work at the checkout, you need to choose stress-resistant employees who can work with any queue, can find mutual language with each client, fulfill all his requests. In any case, the speed of service at the checkout directly depends on the quality of the work of the cashier, and therefore this aspect should be given special attention. The slowness or fussiness of the cashier causes only irritation in store visitors, this should be avoided.
Equipment failure
The reason for the slow customer service in the checkout area of the store may lie in a malfunction or poor performance of equipment. For example, when a pos-terminal - a device for accepting plastic cards for payment - processes a request from a bank for a long time, then not only the cardholder, but also all the store visitors standing in line have to wait for a “response”. Check the serviceability of the cash register, pos-terminal, barcode reader so that this technique does not “slow down” the customer service process.
Incorrect technological layout of the checkout area
More than 15% of the time a customer spends in a store falls on the checkout area, which means that it should be as convenient as possible for visitors. To do this, it must be initially correctly designed, and the equipment - racks, showcases, cash machine- must be correctly positioned. It is known that the flow of customers in the checkout area of the store is always intense, the “turnover” is large, which means that the racks in this area must be stable so that customers cannot accidentally break or drop them. Take care of the comfort of finding customers in the checkout area - they should not be crowded, they should not be “squeezed” between the racks. If the store has a large crowd at the checkout, try to provide an air cooling system, especially during the hot season.
Comprehensive trade automation at a minimum cost
We take a regular computer, connect any fiscal registrar and install the Business Ru Kassa application. As a result, we get an economical analogue of a POS-terminal as in a large store with all its functions. We enter goods with prices in the Business.Ru cloud service and start working. For everything about everything - a maximum of 1 hour and 15-20 thousand rubles. for the fiscal registrar.
Saving store space
Businessmen often try to expand trading area store by reducing the checkout area. This should not be allowed, as this entails "pandemonium" at the box office, which means that even the "normative" three people in line from the outside will look like a crowd of people, which will certainly scare away visitors. Do not save on the checkout area of your store, as the main thing is the comfortable stay of customers in it.
In order to minimize queues in your store, pay attention to all the above reasons for their occurrence, approach the solution of the issue in a complex way: change the layout of the checkout area, make the passage to it convenient, accessible, spacious; properly organize the work of the service personnel, if necessary, conduct training or “educational” conversations and remember that it is the absence of a queue in front of the cash register that directly affects and contributes to creating a good impression of the customer about the store and stimulates his desire to make a purchase.
How to deal with queues in the store?
1. Introduction of self-checkouts
We have already considered the benefits and significant positive effects of installing self-service checkouts in our article. Self-service checkouts: is it worth implementing? In general, experts recognize the effectiveness of this method of “fighting” queues in retail stores. By installing self-service checkouts along with regular checkouts, an entrepreneur will help to “heal” his trading enterprise from constant queues and crowds of customers. Of course, not every store visitor is ready to use the self-service checkout, most often the younger generation uses such modern technological capabilities. But there is no doubt that the “most in a hurry” of the buyers will not want to stand in line, but will prefer to pay for their purchases at the self-service checkout.
In addition, self-service checkouts are more compact and take up several times less space than traditional checkouts. They help to increase the throughput of the cash point, reduce queues during the so-called "peak hours" in the store.
2. Employee motivation
If the reason for the formation of queues in your trade enterprise lies in the sluggishness of cashiers and their unwillingness to quickly serve customers, do not rush to say goodbye to negligent employees, because it is not easy to find a good cashier today. The right decision here would be to properly motivate your employees to work at the cash register. For example, if the cashier does not see the difference between whether he serves 5 customers per hour or 20, then such an employee has no incentive to speed up the process of customer service.
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