Over the last decade, grocery stores and specialty shops have shifted their priorities from customer service to customer experience. Many customers want frictionless experiences where they can get in and out of a store without interacting with store associates. This is where having good produce recognition technology is vital. Innovative produce recognition technology can help eliminate slow transaction times and inaccurate item recognition and give shoppers an experience they actually want.



Removing uncertainty from self-checkout  
The in-store experience shoppers want doesn’t include spending 20 minutes standing in line behind six other shoppers while a single associate scans every item. However, it does include a fast and accurate check-out experience that can get them in and out of a store as quickly as possible.

Nothing makes a check-out experience feel longer than trying to find the right kind of organic cucumber from the picklist, only to choose the wrong one and require an associate to help cancel the item. Many shoppers even avoid self-checkout from the potential anxiety they may experience from being unable to find their non-barcode produce item while a line of waiting shoppers queue up behind them waiting to finish. 



But suppose you could eliminate those concerns for your shoppers and remove the unnecessary time and uncertainty of manual item lookup so they can check out with confidence. In that case, you can change the perception of self-checkout and overcome shopper aversions. By implementing a more automated approach using produce recognition. Not only will this create better checkout experiences for your customers but will provide the added benefits of increased self-checkout adoption for more effective in-store labor distribution, improved loss prevention, and more accurate item inventory visibility.

Improving Accuracy with Item Recognition
In addition to the effect difficult self-checkout experiences have on customer, it can also have significant impacts on the business. Inventory shrink is a common issue affecting most retailers’ profits and leading to revenue loss. When inventory shrink is high, it can indicate a store has underlying problems. One of the most common causes of shrink is when SKU numbers are inadvertently, or sometimes intentionally, entered incorrectly for an item. Stores lose money when items scan for the incorrect cost, they lose visibility to accurate inventory tracking, and customers lose time waiting for an associate to clear out inaccuracies in their order. A banana is a banana, not a steak; avoiding that mistake should be easy and intuitive.

By utilizing advanced produce recognition software built using integrated computer vision and artificial intelligence, you can ensure that the products are being correctly identified, weighed, and priced to protect the business while creating a more customer-friendly checkout experience.

Make Produce Recognition a Priority
Stores should constantly be evolving to meet shoppers where they are. Customers simply want to shop where they can easily get in and out. From faster transaction times to increased loss prevention, can your store really afford not to make produce recognition a priority?

To understand what’s going on with self-checkout in the industry, check out our recent blog “Self-Service: Meeting the Customer Where They Are.”

ELERA™ Produce Recognition increases scanning accuracy and reduces the need for manual input of codes and intervention from store associates—making the self-checkout process a faster, friendlier, and more innovative experience for consumers.