NCR introduces personalisation platform for self-checkout terminals

NCR Corporation launched a new software platform to offer a personalised experience for consumers at self-checkout, reflecting a consumer's individual preferences, at the recent Retail Business Technology Expo in London. With this solution, retailers can provide a unique and differentiated shopping experience, deliver promotions more effectively, further reduce checkout times and enhance customer loyalty.
 
Customers can set their preferences for self-checkout through the retailer's existing loyalty programme, or a preference management solution such as the NCR Enterprise Preference manager. Consumers can select a personal theme for the self-checkout screens, adding logos of a sports team for example, opt to interact in their preferred language, indicate that they are left-handed or that they prefer to receive digital receipts. When the shopper arrives at the store and scans their loyalty card or mobile device, the software provides this information via web services to the self-checkout terminal, prompting it to adapt to the customer's stated preferences.
 
The new software also features innovative learning technology that automatically adapts to a consumer's shopping history. For example, the software can automatically populate pick lists at the self-checkout for frequently purchased produce items. This capability will further reduce checkout lines and wait times for customers.
 
This new personalisation capability is part of the NCR c-tailing solutions, which are a set of software and services that enable retailers to offer consumers greater personalisation and consistency across channels, such as the Internet, mobile devices, social media and in the store. These converged retailing solutions enable retailers to differentiate themselves, lower operating costs and attract today's empowered and elusive consumer.
 
"Consumers today expect retailers to understand their preferences and deliver personalised, differentiated offers," said John Curnow, director of NCR's retail and hospitality business for Northern Europe. "Personalising the self-checkout experience enables customers to create a shopping experience more relevant to their needs and helps retailers to build closer relationships with customers and deliver a converged retailing experience."
 
Additional preferences enabled in the initial release include selectable themes, which allow the consumer to personalise their self-checkout display screens with a variety of retailer-defined options, such as sports or music.
 
The software release is available to new or existing NCR SelfServ Checkout customers.
 
Millions of consumers use NCR SelfServ Checkout at more than 150 retailers from 12 different retail segments and over 22 countries around the world every day. NCR recently has been ranked again as the global market leader in self-checkout, according to VDC Research Group and Retail Banking Research (RBR).