As I spent a warm summer day with my old-school gasoline-powered lawnmower, wondering how expensive a herd of goats might be compared to my lawnmower, it sparked a thought about technology and its constant evolution.
Our industry has long been enamored with technology. We’ve also been some of the early adopters as we look for options to provide better customer service, reduce operating costs and make our complicated lives easier.
Long ago, I worked for a large convenience-store retailer, and it was often said that data is like gold: the more we had, the better we were. Sales data by item? Holy cow, that’s amazing.
Customer loyalty reporting—so I know what they buy, how often and where? Heck, yeah, sign me up. Even our vendors were scrambling for our data. We could be better through actually knowing information versus anecdotal gut instinct … maybe.
As I was thinking about how amazing our jobs in the convenience-store world are now that we have all this technology and information to be better, and faster, how many of us really are, and whose definition of “better” are we using?
All the data in the world isn’t valuable unless you have both the time and knowledge of what to do with it. Does technology get you closer to being a better retailer, or does it make you feel like you are?
What about the customer? This is really where my lawnmower strayed from the lines I attempted to make in my unmanicured yard as I pondered this epiphany. In the past decade since I installed my first touchscreen bean-to-cup coffee brewer, to just this past March in opening a new store with one, I continue to encounter customer frustration with technology.
“I just want a cup of coffee,” many customers exclaimed both then and now. Touchscreen fountain machines—are we selling more because they look cooler?
New fuel dispensers rival something out of “The Jetsons” these days. As an elder millennial, I can make that joke while still having to explain to a growing demographic reading this that “The Jetsons” cartoon used to be the future we assumed we’d all have. (And yes, I did in fact name my Roomba vacuum Rosie.)
Self-checkout? While we can largely thank grocery stores, Target and Walmart for bringing this technology mainstream, and the costs of technology get more attainable for smaller retailers, is it worth it?
As we think about what our customers need, convenience—the namesake of our industry—are we delivering that?
Tech continues to be more affordable for smaller retailers, but what about repairs? You know what some of the most cost-effective dispensers are? Tokheim 300s. Those puppies might not be fast, or take credit cards, or do much of anything other than dispense fuel, but the mechanical elements rarely broke down as, gosh darn it, customers knew how to use them.
Is the new technology delivering on its promise, helping us to deliver services faster, save us money and deliver on the promises to make us better, or are we enamored by thinking we must have the newest shiny object to be relevant?
Steve Morris is president of St. Paul, Minnesota-based Retail Management Inc. Reach him at smorris@retailmgmtinc.com. Retail Management Inc. handles the operations, marketing and accounting functions for any small-format retailer including convenience stores and truck stops, vape shops and liquor stores. Operations include staffing and supervising, product replenishment and ordering and vendor negotiation.
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