CVS- Shopper’s Interaction

I rarely go into a CVS or Walgreen’s, but I made an extra special effort to explore a downtown DC CVS for the sake of my upcoming User Experience Design Course.

I went in around 6:30pm, it was fairly quiet, but I noticed a small line of 3 people at the main checkout — the one with the human. Then there were four checkout kiosks, 2 were under maintenance, one was credit only and the other was functioning correctly and had one customer using it.

I do attribute the time of day to my user experience since I didn’t actually experience any issues, but had it been a typical morning or midday influx of people, the checkout lines would have exponentially increased.

My glaring interpretation from my visit was that people enjoyed the interaction with the human cashier and hence they were willing to wait in line. I am this person. More often that not, I’ll gladly wait in line for a human to check me out if I’m only behind 1–3 people.

My creative brain didn’t seem to be functioning well, I tried to do some realistic brainstorming, but I don’t feel that I came up with much that would be similar and cost the same in reality. Below are a few sketches that I came up with.

The first below if what actually took place, with 2 broken kiosks. Again, I’m imaging an influx of customers and this setting would prove to have a backlog of people in line and a potential loss of revenue. I would not wait in a 10 minute line if I were just trying to buy a drink and some gum on my way to a morning meeting.

The second option below shows the cash register closed, but there’s a floating CVS employee hovering around the 2 functioning kiosks, ready to aid if there’s an issue. It’s hopefully speedy and they also get a sliver of human interaction, at least a “Have a great day!” as you exit the store.

Next, up. Two more sketches and so help me, I cannot flip this image on Medium! My patience is gone, I’ve uploaded and taken various shots with my phone to no avail. I’m moving on.

First off, I have another sketch. They could add light posts to each register indicating which is open and which are closed. It’s an accepted symbol as it’s already used in grocery and some department stores. There could be two people on the register with one designated as a floater for the kiosks and only step in if the lines got out of hand.

The second sketch below it, is a similar iteration, but no one is on the cash register. There are two CVS floater employees and one is designated to the kiosks to provide service, but also greet and say farewell to customers when they are not assisting an issue with a kiosk. The customer interaction would be critical here to give the customer a sense that they saw and interacted with a human, regardless of needing them for anything.

My overall takeaway here is that human interaction provides so much more that we we simply see on the surface. I understand that CVS has a bottom-line and cannot simply staff 2 cash registers and have a floater or two roaming the store. This is why I’m such a fan of a floater standing by the kiosks. Their priority would be interacting with at least a “Goodbye” to consumers post kiosk checkout, but could also easily add in a “Welcome” to customers entering the store. And, obviously if any of the kiosks users had an issue, that would be their priority. Fast service in terms of handing a large influx of customer son a routine basis coupled with the customer service portion of just seeing a human and having some sort of minimal interaction with them.