Ringing Up Water Job Aid
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A paper job aid to help cashiers determine how to ring up customers for two distinct water purchases. Designed to be printed on printer paper and to be left at the cash register.
Overview and the Problem:
This was created for a cooperative grocery store. While revamping the cashier training, it was noted that ringing up water has been a difficult topic to properly explain. There are two distinct ways to purchase large quantities of water. During cashier training, teaching how to discern which one the customer wants and how to ring it up properly is a common pain point. New learners often struggle to understand the differences. This can create big price discrepancies, unhappy customers, and loss of revenue.
The Solution:
To supplement the in-person training, a paper job aid was created to help both the trainer and the learner. A diagram was created that could be used as a visual aid to explain how the water deposits function for the store. This gives context to the learners about the different water types. The backside highlights the specific vocabulary a cashier should use to distinguish between the two ways to ring up water. It also provides the Product Look-Up codes (PLUs) that they must use depending on the customer's needs.
Development:
While the larger cashier training revamp used the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) process, this job aid used the Successive Approximation Model (SAM) in its creation. Mock-ups of the required information were shown to experienced and inexperienced cashiers to gauge the type of information that they truly needed. Then, different font sizes and visual elements were chosen to best accommodate their performance context. It needed to be readable for the cashier to find the relevant information cashier at a glance. It also needed to be small enough to not be intrusive at the cash register. One cashier in particular was a valuable source of information for this testing. She often needed a magnifying glass to read other job aids, and she found she was able to use this one without the use of the magnifying glass. After initial testing, it was suggested to include an explanation on “deposits” as well.
Results:
Employees and management were happy with the overall results. They were positive toward its use as a job aid as it was easy to print multiple copies on one piece of paper. To evaluate its effectiveness, the number of errors in ringing up waters from the past 3 months was compared to the transaction history of the 3 months after the job aids had been implemented. There was a decline in significant errors after the job aid was implemented. The number of errors in a completed transaction went down from 4 to 6 times a month to 1 to 2. It is important to note that this data only counts for mistakes that occurred after a transaction has been completed. Errors that were fixed before a transaction was completed, or where a customer did not complain cannot be tracked by the company’s computer system.
