Re:New research: cashiers who have their own lines move cust...
by ubernostrum on Sunday June 12, 2016 @08:00AM
(#11887697)
As a customer I only, only care about my perception of speed, not actual speed.
Which in turn can be gamed. See the infamous story from Houston, where there were large numbers of airport complaints saying it took too long for arriving baggage to reach the bag claim. The solution was:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting...
(they rearranged things to increase the distance between arrival gates and bag claim; it still took the same amount of time to deliver bags to bag claim, but now passengers spent more time getting to the bag claim and less time waiting at bag claim, so they perceived it as faster and complained less)
Re:New research: cashiers who have their own lines move cust...
by cbanek on Sunday June 12, 2016 @09:35AM
(#11888023)
I've also heard a similar story about complaining about elevators taking a long time, but after installing floor to ceiling mirrors in the lobby, people were distracted enough where it didn't feel like it took as long and stopped complaining.
Re:New research: cashiers who have their own lines move cust...
by sokoloff on Sunday June 12, 2016 @06:56AM
(#11887547)
To me, a single line seems both more fair and variance-reducing. With multiple lines, I find myself walking the area, judging who has more (or more time-consuming) items, who is likely to pay half in coins and the other half by check, who's likely to call for a price check, etc.
As a customer I only, only care about my perception of speed, not actual speed.
Multiple lines 'seem' fair, there's also little variance and hence I leave feeling positive most of the time.
A store might save a small percent on cashers using this research but pissing the customers off the huge amount it would seems like poor economics.