What's In The Box
The brand new podcast from BOXTEC. Join us as we invite guests from retail and hospitality to discuss the issues of the day, with one unique twist: uncut, unedited and each episode just fifteen minutes long - because we're busy and we know you are too.
What's In The Box
Beyond the Queue: Reimagining Service in Luxury Retail
Luxury retail and self-checkout technology might seem like unlikely companions, but Harrods has proven this combination can dramatically enhance the customer experience. In this fascinating conversation with Paul Reid, Harrods' Senior Retail Systems Manager, we uncover how one of the world's most iconic department stores transformed its bustling Food Hall and Chocolate Hall through innovative self-service technology.
When self-checkouts were first introduced at Harrods in 2018, there were understandable concerns about how they would align with the store's legendary customer service reputation. Yet customers embraced the technology immediately, setting the stage for a retail evolution that would culminate in what Paul describes as "self-checkout saving Christmas." The most dramatic improvement came from reimagining the entire customer flow – creating a single queue feeding both manned and self-service tills rather than separate lines, and adding additional self-checkout units. The results were remarkable: during peak Christmas periods, queues that previously took 15-20 minutes to clear now dispersed within "single-digit minutes." Today, the six self-checkout stations handle more transactions of higher value than the four manned tills.
What makes this retail transformation particularly valuable is that it succeeded in one of retail's most challenging environments. Unlike traditional stores with defined entrance and exit points, Harrods' Food Hall features multiple entry ways, creating complex customer flow challenges. Their success suggests that with thoughtful implementation focusing on the entire customer journey – not just the technology itself – self-checkout can enhance virtually any retail environment from luxury to everyday shopping. Looking ahead, Harrods is exploring AI-powered innovations to further improve the experience while maintaining the premium service their customers expect. Retailers considering similar transformations would be wise to follow their lead in prioritizing customer flow rather than simply adding technology.
Ready to learn more about innovative retail solutions? Follow the link in our show notes to discover how BoxTech is powering retail with purpose, from design and integration to ongoing support.
Welcome back to what's in the Box, the brand new podcast brought to you by Box Technologies. Powering retail with purpose. Boxtech delivers innovative and market-leading customer engagement solutions that turn business ideas into a performing reality, from design, integration to ongoing support and maintenance. We're with you every step of the way. Now, this podcast is a little different to what you might be used to. It's audio only, totally unscripted, and just 15 to maybe 20 minutes each episode, because we're busy, our guests certainly are, and we're sure you are too. So let's get right into it, and this week, delighted to welcome somebody from Harrods.
Speaker 1:And for those of you familiar with Harrods Food Hall, you might not equate it to what we're going to be talking about today, which is all about self-checkout. The Food Hall is grand, it's an unbelievable place to go shopping for your food and it's generally associated with great customer service. However, over the last couple of years, harrods has been on something of a self-checkout journey which, instead of hindering customer service, has greatly enhanced it, to the point where the iconic store freely admits that, following some changes which we'll discuss, self-checkout saved Christmas. So, without further ado, here to tell us all about it is Harrods Senior Retail Systems Manager, paul Reid. Paul, it's great to have you on what's in the Box. Thanks, andrew. Thanks for having me on. So I mentioned there in the introduction that we're going to be talking about the self-checkout journey Now. You joined Harrods, I believe in 2022. Yeah, tell us before we get into that journey what it was like, because I mentioned that you have self-checkout now in the food hall, but also in the chocolate hall, and where else do you have it?
Speaker 2:At the moment, there are only two locations. Those are the two on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know that there have been some changes. I mentioned that. We'll get into that, but talk us through from the beginning of that journey, if you like um, self-checkout how it came about. Obviously, our listeners are going to be fascinated by the reasons why you chose to go down a self-checkout route, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, describe the journey to us, of course. Yeah um.
Speaker 2:So the harrod self-checkout journey started way back in 2018. As you said, andrew, I didn't join until 2022. So four years before I joined, the self-checkout journey started with the implementation of four units in our fresh hall, which has got delicate tests and fresh food counters, and also in our chocolate hall with three units there. I think, internally, from what I gather from talking to various people that I work with, at the time when self-checkouts were implemented, certainly within Harrods there were mixed feelings about how they would be perceived by customers. You mentioned earlier around Harrods being famous for customer service and by introducing self-checkouts, of course, you use that opportunity to interact with the customers. So internally, I think within within harrah's, there was mixed mixed views about how they were, how they would be perceived, but obviously delighted that actually the customers you know obviously they're used to using self-checkouts, having using them, using them at other retailers for 20 years or so. So actually straight from the world, world go.
Speaker 1:Self checkouts at harrah's were were a success and we started to drive efficiencies at the front hand, front end, in those both of those locations which are both really really busy areas of the store and if anybody's been into the food hall, particularly I think it's fair to say, paul at lunchtime, it's incredibly, it's an incredibly busy environment and, unlike your typical grocer, should we say that's got a very definite, definitive entrance and exit. Of course, the food hall there has got a large number of entrances and exits, so I guess that that presented another challenge for you absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not the traditional front end. Certainly I was used to when I used to work at sainsbury's many years ago. You do have a till point. Back in 2018 there was a choice of the threshold of whether you wanted to go to a self-checkout or to a man till. But yeah, it's very different front end.
Speaker 2:To get into the, into the fresh room in the chocolate hall, you have multiple entrances and exits, which makes that customer journey quite difficult to navigate for customers. So obviously, what we're trying to, what you're trying to do with how, is just trying to move customers through that area so they can pay as efficiently as possible to get them into other areas of the store, to hopefully spend more money in other departments, um, so it's really critical to try and you know to get that customer throughput through through the front end as quickly as possible. It's fair to say, as I say, it's 2018 when we first implemented the self-checkouts, but there were bottlenecks that we could see appearing. I touched on that. We had two queuing, two queues for fixed or self checkouts in the in the fresh hall, and what we did in in 2014 sorry, 2024 was a line had a better queuing system implemented for the threshold specifically, so one single queue for fixed hill and and self checkouts with assistance directing customers and that made an even even better experience for customers.
Speaker 1:So the throughput is has vastly been improved from that now let's um, just kind of um, as the americans would say. Double click on that. I hate that expression, but drill down, that's probably not even any better either. But in terms of that configuration change, because I I should say, by the way at this point, because I don't think we have yet that BoxTech are proud partners of Harrods and work with you very closely to improve, deploy this. I I joined box tech towards the end of last year and I had a look at, visited the food hall and had a look at the configuration there about time, which would have been october last year, yeah, before christmas. Could you this podcast is audio only so if you can describe to us what the configuration and the layout looked like at that time?
Speaker 2:first of all, yeah, okay, so back then. So this time-ish last year, the configuration, the layout of the self-checkouts, especially in the threshold specifically, was unchanged from when they were first introduced back in 2018. So, just to recap, 2018 was when the first self-checkouts went in. They weren't box units. They actually upgraded our backend software to an app to 2.7 in 2023, and that gave us the opportunity to look at other suppliers and bear in mind. All of the other tools at Harris came from box. We thought it would be a great opportunity to collaborate with yourselves to come up with an improved self-checkout solution. So that's exactly what we did in 2023. That's when we looked to improve things and my retail stakeholders reached out to a third party who specialise in customer flow and between them they came up with a much better solution for the front end in the in the threshold, and that resulted, as I touched on earlier, a single queue for for both till types, and that actually resulted in a much better experience, and that's what we've got now. So it's like a funnel approach one way in one queue, an assistant directing customers to whether they want to pay a self-checkout or a fixed till, and actually that change was a massive made, a massive improvement for last Christmas.
Speaker 2:I've done three Christmases at Harris and I always insist on working on a Christmas Eve because it's a wonderful, magical place to be. And each year that I've been involved and spent a lot of time at the front end in those busy, busy areas of the stores, I've seen an improvement. But the biggest improvement was christmas last year when we'd see a single queue and and customers flowing through that area much better and I there was an example. I was talking to um, one of the retail directors, after christmas last year and they were saying on one of their busiest trading days just before christmas it was a sunday we open our doors half an hour before we trade. Due to Sunday trading hours, we can only trade for six hours, so we open our doors at half 11 for the store to open spot on and the sales to open as well at 12 o'clock.
Speaker 2:So what we'd see in those busy areas of the stores is customers select their products and then wait to queue up to get through. So as a consequence you'd have hundreds of people trying to pay for their products and whereas before we changed the queue layout, that would take 15 to 20 minutes to clear. What we found with that new configuration is that that queue dissipated within single-digit minutes as soon as the tills opened. It was much more efficient. So that was a really significant part, and and actually it wasn't just the layout that we changed we actually introduced two more self checkouts into the threshold as well. So now we've got six self checkouts and only four man tills, and those six self checkouts do the grunt of the work. The analysis that we did after christmas is that they do more transactions per till and and more transactions and of higher value on the self-checkouts compared to the fixed tills. So we get a much more efficient front end as a result of the changes that we've made.
Speaker 1:And I think not to overstate it, having seen both the before and the after, because I then went back in December and I saw that different layout it's quite remarkable how clearly some very well thought through changes and you mentioned you engaged a third party who specialise in customer flow and design, and I think the way that I look at it, from both my role at BoxTech but also my role observing what goes on in retail, is that pretty much maybe with the exception of the grocers, but perhaps they still are self-checkout, are on a journey of discovery, trying to work out how to best utilize and get the best return on their investment.
Speaker 1:And I think that the beauty of this and the value of this is, first of all, it's in probably one of the most tricky if that's the right word areas the food hall to put self-checkout in, and and you've managed to make it work and you're also perfectly willing to to talk about it. So I'd urge particularly any retailer listening to this podcast to to get in touch, because I I know that um you're quite happy to to talk to people about this, paul, because it it seems that you're really at the forefront, if you like, from a lot of retailers, and we know that it's going into fashion, general merchandise, diy, electrical, perhaps it's going into a lot of different sectors and you've kind of got the template, if you like, for how to go about maximizing your, your investment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's that's fair. Fair comment, sarah. I mean I think it's probably also fair to say that I think if we, if we can make it work self checkouts and you know and improve the customer experience we can, if we and we have made it work at harrods, in the, in our busy threshold, as we said, with a multiple entrances and exits, and it can work there in a scenario that's very different to the traditional front end in grocery, I think it could probably work in most areas, and we are actually having discussions with other parts of the business at Harrods to see where else it could be deployed Potentially. There's a hall next to our threshold where they sell a lot more of the ambient products so tea and coffee and there's conversations going on at the moment about, potentially, how you know, you could look to reconfigure that area and one of the things that we'll clearly be on the table is that self-checkouts at work to the hall next to it.
Speaker 2:How could it work in that area? Because, again, the more, the quicker you get people through these really busy areas, the better it is for the customer and for harris as well. So, yeah, so we are talking internally about other areas of the business where we could put it. But, yeah, be delighted to talk to any of your customers or prospective customers about the self-checkout journey at harrods because, um, it's been, yeah, it's been a really good project to work on over the last. Well, my first three years at harrods and it's and hopefully it's going to continue.
Speaker 1:Continue on from there that's very kind of you to say that, and thank you, paul. Now one thing we've got about a minute left. Don't want to leave this before just touching on a topic which I know is. When you start talking about self-checkout, it comes to the forefront of people's minds and that's, of course, shrinkage. Now in the food hall you've got some very high-value items, so I'm sure that it went into your thinking. Could you just tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. Yeah, and I think, think like that anyway that we are implementing self-checkouts and you're asking customers to scan products rather than hand them over to a colleague to scan them. There is always going to be that element of risk. But how is them? You know, exactly the same as other retailers. We'll put controls around that.
Speaker 2:You know we have a, a, um, a camera above every self-checkout and we have it above every tiller actually at Harrods. But we've got them all above all the self-checkouts. We've got detaggers in the self-checkouts so expensive products are tagged, sometimes at source, sometimes in store, for the expensive lines and other products We've also got you mentioned Wagyu Steak. You know we've actually got fixed tills on the counters in those areas as well to their expensive purchases going through in those areas. Our colleagues are asked to put those through the fixed tills. But that still means there's an awful lot of traffic going through the self-checkouts where someone's coming in to pick up a bottle of wine from the fresh store, a nice chilled bottle of wine, to go with their pasta meal for the evening. So there's still an awful lot of stuff that goes through our self-checkouts. But we do have other controls in place to manage shrinkage.
Speaker 2:That leads me nicely on to, I guess, what's next for Harris and self-checkouts. Now we're looking at the potential of using and working with Box and one of your partners Angible at introducing our AI technology at the SCO. We've already got customer-facing cameras, like many retailers have, but we'd like to explore the possibility of downward-facing cameras looking at the transactions in front of the scanner to see if we can learn anything about how customers interact and integrate that with our Enactor software, potentially to maybe encourage customers to scan things slightly differently or if they double scan or try to scan two items at the same time. So that's something maybe for the future, but hopefully that project will be something we can look at in the near future.
Speaker 1:Okay, it sounds very, very, very exciting, and I guess, before any of that, we've got christmas 2025 to look forward to, which is not that far away.
Speaker 2:it's not, it's not, and I'm really looking forward to it again. It will be, you know, my fourth, my fourth christmas. I'll be there again on christmas eve and I'll be spending a lot of my time at the self checkouts as well, and hopefully well, I know it will be even better this year with all the things that we've learned on our journey. It's been great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that sounds absolutely great, paul. Thank you so much. That was absolutely brilliant and, as I said during that, if any retailer listening to this wants to learn more, then please do get in touch. So that's all from what's in the box for now. New episodes will be dropping every two weeks, so please stay tuned, and if you want to find out more about BoxTech, please follow the link in the description. Many thanks for listening.