Cashiers or machines?

"The day may come when cashouts will be self service such as gas stations, banks or highwaytolls. Customers will put their purchases in a computerized box that will scan the barcodes, VAT, do the total and will then swallow their credit or debit card, get authorization from the center, issue a receipt, give one or more bags of appropriate size and announce with a metallic voice: "Thank you-to have-made-your-shopping-in-Paco-beep-we-are-glad-to-announce-you-a-10%-discount- on-your-next-mens accessorizes-shopping-beep-great-day-thank you-to- have-done... " Paco Underhill was already right except for bags: he didn't expect that we should come with our own bags for shopping...

Self scanning system should replace the "smile" of the cashier and avoid you to deal with products in your trolley.Should be as well a gain of time and simplify customer daylife... When it works!

Selfscanning system is already working in different places and a lot of retailers are starting to use it: Carrefour ("Rapid' ticket"), IKEA, Decathlon in Europe and use 2 different systems: personnal scanners (customers take it at the entrance, scan EAN codes during shopping and connect the scanners at the end of shopping to know the total of purchases). If you have got an iPhone, it is even simplier: you can also do everything from home. Download coop@home application and you will be able to scan codes and add products to your next order sitting in your leaving room. On the place you can as well scan yourself all your products one by one at a self checkout and pay, without any help. But is it really a progress? We are far from the origin of the word "trade" that first refered to some notions of communication and relationships. Developping the notion of self service was for sure a revolution for trade and stores but where are the limits? Faster, simplier...but alone. Is that the way customer are going to buy more, to come back? Is that really the store that customers would like to find? I am sure we will find strong supporters of such concept, I am sure that this could be a way to gain time, improve margins in satured markets... but I still believe that human factor is primordial for stores success, even for hypermarkets. Customers need to meet some human beeings at least before leaving. Despite all progresses made by mass distribution, despite the whole science of merchandising, the beautification of the stores, the time at cashouts is still not a pleasant experience.
And if you add all that you have to think about, to do by yourself during shopping in hypermarkets today, it is for sure not pleasant and sometimes a real stress. Exactly at the opposite of expected result.

Let's admit now that we have cashiers in stores. What should be their role? Difficult indeed...
If they only scan products and tell us the total, we can do it by ourself. If My cashier is able to leave me and be replaced by a new cashier and tell me: "My colleague will complete" (which clearly means "my break can not wait"), this means that there is no cashier-customer relationship as she doesn't mind breaking this relationship.. Clearly, my cashier was already in fact a machine, and we are back to the previous situation. If they should do everything at the same time (and we can still find such cashiers, at least in stores Auchan in Moscow) : scan, put in bags, check the price and weight of fruits and vegetables already weighed in store, smile, within a limit of time, and this 300 to 400 times a day, whatever the mood of the person in front of them...everyone will come to the same conclusion: this is not easy and not human. Cashiers are real machines!!!

Is there any solution?