Almost fifteen years ago when the Electronic Article Surveillance
(EAS) gates were new in our retail stores in India, the EAS tags would come in
different shapes and sizes and many retailers did not know how to handle the
challenges that came with them. I remember once when an alarm went off at the
EAS exit gates of the store the security guards checked the customer’s
purchases in public, as though the store succeeded in nabbing a shoplifter! The mistake was the cashier’s as he had overlooked
the EAS tag on one item among the many articles she purchased. The customer
happened to be the wife of a large Indian private sector bank’s chairman and I
know that she never returned to the store in spite of our repeated efforts to
apologize to her personally to bring her back into the store. Customers once
insulted are unforgiving forever!
The narrow margins on food and grocery in India render
electronic security tagging unviable and hence most of the modern supermarkets in
India do not have any EAS systems. Instead they have security staff, who check
every bill out and stamp it too to ensure that the payment has been made. If
the items bought are less in number, they ensure that a detailed reconciliation
of the quantity against the bill is done! My friend Malcolm Stephens while
speaking about customer distrust in service cites an incidence: The customer
complains to the waiter that the dosa
he served was not warm enough and the waiter promptly took it back but placed
his hand in front of the customer on the dosa
to check if it was not warm at all – showing sheer disbelief on what the
customer said! When every item is seen and reconciled by the security,
customers may just wait and smile for the moment but may not like to come to
the store again. Efficient checkouts can save a lot of embarrassments to both
the retailer and the customer. I have seen many times in apparel stores
security personnel calling exiting customers, to dig into their bags to check
if the payment has been made.
“Sorry Ma’m, may be our cashiers have forgotten to deactivate the tag on the merchandise” said the security at the customer exit point of a reputed
department store in Pune recently as the alarm from the EAS
gates went off in full fury. There was a very cordial interaction between the
security and the customer there because the customer was made very comfortable
in an embarrassing situation of the alarm going off in front of a large number
of people in the store. Interestingly the customer replied, “Yes, amidst quite a few items
I bought, may be there is one yet with a tag also. Let’s check it out”, and
both moved quietly away from the place to reconcile the items against the cash
memo. I did not know what exactly happened afterwards but I was sure of one
thing though – that the staff were well trained to handle any situation, giving
every benefit of doubt to the customer without showing an iota of a feeling of
distrust.
In the technologies earlier used in the EAS systems, the
microwave frequency was said to match its frequency with various other metals
and it was consequently reported to raise false alarms, which inconvenienced
customers a great deal. Jokes used to be afloat in retailing circles that a
certain EAS frequency synchronized with some kind of ‘Copper T’ women used to
wear and one can imagine the embarrassment it could have caused to both the
customer and the retailer! Now with the advent of Acousto Magnetics, the EAS system is said to have become more
efficient with its accurate detection capabilities. Coupled with the deployment
of efficient and updated EAS system and well trained store personnel, even
false alarms or alarms that go off consequent to overlooked tags can be handled
efficiently without inflicting insults on customers. On the other hand such
efficiencies can prevent store shrinkage as well and no one needs to dig deep
into shopping bags in disbelief at all!
- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani
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