Just Use the App

This post was inspired by an experience my wife had during a recent trip to Home Depot when she was trying to locate an item in the store. Gen Zers may not blink at this but to those of us who grew up before life revolved around our phones it was about as asinine as it gets.

       Here goes. My wife approached an orange-aproned employee and asked if he could tell her which aisle the S-hooks she needed were in. With a straight face he said, “if you download the HD app you can find anything in any of our stores.”. One, then what the hell are you here for. Two, so much for customer service. She was taken aback by the utter stupidity of his answer. He has the app on his phone (I’ve encountered helpful HD employees who used that app when they didn’t know offhand where to find what I was looking for) – which he was holding – so he could have easily asked her what she was looking for, checked the app, and directed her to the item. Nope. Instead, he directed her to a far-off aisle that was not in fact where that item resided. Turns out it was in the aisle in which this encounter took place. Can’t make that up.

       We are going app crazy. There are apps for everything now, including apps to manage your apps! Retailers, especially fast-food outlets, are ramping up their app use by giving perks for orders via their apps. Of course, there is a cost to this as those apps track your location, purchasing history, and often invade your phone’s contacts, photos, and other personal data, so it can be sold to marketing firms.

       Between apps and self-checkout – both of which became more pervasive during Covid – retailers are putting more work on the customer in the name of convenience, while reducing the need for employees in stores and boosting profit margins. This brings me back to my wife’s saga. With only the contractor register staffed, she was forced to use a self-checkout lane. Again, those brought up on this may not care, but shouldn’t we get a discount if we are doing the work ourselves? And when an employee has to stand by the self-checkout counter to help shoppers, why not put that employee behind a register to provide better service and better use that person’s time?

       Ironically, after expanding self-checkout as a convenience for customers, a few of the biggest retailers are re-thinking it. This is due to a combination of incorrect pricing discovered by shoppers in many stores and an increase in losses due to theft – costing them more than paying a cashier. People are taking advantage of the lack of monitors at self-checkout kiosks to help themselves to “discounts”. Now that’s convenience!

       As you may have surmised, I am wary of apps and I loathe self-checkout kiosks. I am very careful when considering downloading an app to my phone and read reviews and the fine print before committing. Many apps make our life easier and provide real value but many more are simply marketing and data gathering tools, so make sure you know what you are getting yourself into when you download that cool new app.

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com  12-11-2023