When you're ready to check out at a grocery store or any retail establishment, the decision between self-service checkout and cashier-assisted lanes isn't always straightforward. While self-checkouts have become a familiar feature in modern retail settings, there's a growing trend of both customers and retailers stepping back from this option. Several factors are driving this shift. Customers often find themselves frustrated by long lines and insufficient staffing at self-checkout stations. Meanwhile, retailers have observed a noticeable increase in shoplifting incidents attributed to these self-service lanes. With these growing frustrations and concerns, some larger retailers have gone as far as to remove self-checkout from certain locations.

For any consumer-facing industry, whether retail, hospitality, or healthcare, self-service technology is not the future - it is the present. Self-service typically refers to instances wherein consumers (or, in this case, patients) go through the checkout or check-in process themselves without the aid of an employee. Of course, there may be instances where employees are required to step in to rectify any issues. Still, self-service is typically an excellent way for organizations to reduce the amount of labor power allocated to the checkout/in area.

WARMINSTER, PA, May 25, 2023 – Self-service checkouts have fast become an integral part of today’s retail environment. In fact, self-checkouts are now twice as common as they were pre-pandemic, and experts predict that this trend toward self-service POS systems will only continue to grow. However, it is important to note that this shift towards self-service checkout systems is not entirely driven by the benefits and convenience of the self-checkout but by broader macroeconomic and business factors too.