Justification/Recommendation Report: Improving Register Efficiency at CircuitCentral CircuitCentral is a high-volume market-leading retailer of consumer electronics and appliances. It has established a reputation for outstanding customer service, selection, and prices. As a supervisor at one of the store’s busiest locations, you must ensure that the checkout and customer service lanes operate efficiently. To make your job easier and to ensure consistency in every store, CircuitCentral has established an action plan to prevent long waiting times at registers.
The plan includes assigning backup cashiers from other departments for each shift. Additionally, remote registers are located in several departments to reduce customer flow at the registers nearest the exit. CircuitCentral’s goal is to achieve at least a 35 percent “excellent” response rating from customers. Even the best plans can go awry, however; and this usually happens during holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. With the Labor Day weekend only two months away, you want to avoid the occasional gridlock you encountered last Memorial Day.
Customer Survey Data
To gather information from customers, you decide to tabulate responses to questions from comment cards submitted during the last month. You are particularly interested in the time customers spent in the checkout lines. Here are the results of 320 customer comment cards:

Staff Survey
To gather additional information, you conduct a survey of 20 staff members, including cashiers, customer service representatives, and salespeople. Here are the results of your survey:
Which of the following has caused a delay at a register?
1. Soft tag or CD case removal 64%
2. Approval or override 86
3. Register malfunction 3
4. Incomplete paperwork 7
5. Product registration 13 (e.g., Internet service providers)
6. Employee error 16
Figures do not total 100 percent because of multiple answers.
Personal Observations
Finally, you selected ten registers at random (five near the front entrance, three in customer service, and one each in the TV and Digital Imaging departments) and observed them for five minutes, taking notes. You chose Saturday for these observations because of the typically higher volume of business. Following is a summary of your observations:
● During all five of your visits to registers near the front entrance, you noticed that, although a manager was often needed for a check approval or override, which caused delays, employee confusion about procedures and the registers themselves seemed to account for the majority of delays. You also observed five instances in which an employee needed to go to another cash register to remove security devices. Finally, you noticed several customers in line with satellite TV and wireless equipment.
● In both of your visits to the service desk, one employee was operating one of three available registers. For this reason several customers were left waiting in line for service. During one visit, you observed that when a product needed to be certified by a technician before it could be exchanged, the employee had to walk to the technical department to locate a technician, causing further delay.
● During your visits to the TV and Digital Imaging departments, you saw that floor personnel were overwhelmed with customers asking questions about products. In other words, no one seemed to be available to handle transactions at the open registers. Cheating a bit, you walked over to the kitchen appliance department, where you saw few customers but several employees in the area.

Your Task.
After carefully comparing customer and employee perceptions, present your findings in a memo report to Pat Diggins, general manager, CircuitCentral. In your report, include as much information from the tables as possible, but present it in an easy-to-understand way. What conclusions can you draw from your findings? What recommendations will you make to Ms. Diggins to ensure a successful Labor Day weekend?