Help Yourself: How Zara Is Elevating The Self-Service Experience

When Zara announced earlier this year that they were to start trialing self-service checkouts stations in-store, I couldn’t have been more delighted. Two of my favourite things would be combined: 1. Shopping in Zara and 2. Being able to be master of my own checkout. Having never worked in retail when I was younger (I worked in Starbucks, where I was never allowed to touch the till), the very idea of it was thrilling.

On a recent lunchtime shopping trip, I came across the self-service droids at the Zara on Oxford Street by chance. All my teenage checkout dreams were about to come true. But just to be clear, there has never been much enthusiasm over self-service stations like the ones found in food halls. I always seem to do it wrong. I scan things incorrectly, there’s always an “unexpected item in bagging area” and the red light that flashes embarrassingly, announcing to everyone in the vicinity that you don’t know what you’re doing. The tech just isn’t fast or sophisticated enough. I now avoid them at all costs, even if it means having to wait for longer in the assisted checkout queues.

But there was something different about these voiceless (joy), touch-screen Zara wonder machines. The experience was seamless. The interface is clean and bright - like their app for anyone who has used it - the touch-screen is ridiculously responsive, you even get to remove the security tags yourself (dreamy). But the piéce de la résistance was that there was no individual scanning required. You simply stand by the till and it wirelessly picks up what you're holding and adds it all into your virtual basket on the screen in front of you. What if someone is standing next to you with items that also get picked up on your tab? No problem. You can delete them from your screen in seconds.

From start to finish it took me seven minutes (it probably could have been quicker, but I really relished the process of de-tagging the security tags). With Zara being the leader in the pack of high-street fast fashion, it seems only right that transactions should be swift, speedy and efficient to mirror their production line. As it stands, the machines are only for checkout. If you want to return something you will invariably still have to wait in what always seems to be a ridiculously long queue in the least air-conditioned part of the store, but this is most definitely a step in the right direction and the future of offline retail experiences. Oh, and in case you’re interested in what I actually purchased, I got a skirt, a jumper and a dress. But that's completely besides the point; the process far surpassed the actual purchase.