Morrisons’ new boss ditches till technology in favour of human touch

The grocer’s new chief executive David Potts has made the decision to ditch the use of infa-red sensors to determine how customers move through stores, and will ask checkout teams to use their eye and experience instead.

Potts came to the decision after listening to colleagues and customers in order to understand how to make the checkout experience better for customers and staff. He decided that Morrisons’ checkout teams would make better and more balanced decisions than the iQM computer system.

Potts said: “We intend to be an organisation that listens very hard to its customers and staff and, wherever possible, responds quickly. Our colleagues in our stores are best placed to use their experience and personal judgement in deciding how best to serve their customers, keeping queues low at the checkouts and improving the customer’s shopping trip.”

The supermarket giant also plans to stop using its ‘scan rate’ technology, which measures checkout employee performance by calculating how many products they scan per minute. They will instead be assessed on their level of personal service and teamwork.