Tim Wentworth, CEO of Walgreens, has admitted that the company’s anti-shop-lifting measures may have contributed to lower in-store sales.
The American pharmacy chain decided to place more items under lock and key in a bid to combat shoplifting and retail threats.
In practice, this means that in-store customers needed to ask a member of staff to unlock a container every time they wanted to purchase/peruse certain items.
These measures were introduced in response to a significant increase in ‘shrink’: the loss of inventory not accounted for by sales, which could include loss or theft.
The issue was first raised in 2022 by the company’s former CFO, James Kehoe, who claimed that Walgreens’ shrink rate had increased by 52 percent in the previous decade.
Speaking during the company’s Q1 earnings call, Wentworth admitted that the pharmacy giant was still having issues with shrink, describing it as a "hand-to-hand combat battle."
While he did not expound on whether the lock and key system had helped to decrease the shrink rate, he did state that it had negatively impacted sales:
It does impact how sales work through the store because when you lock things up, for example, you don't sell as many of them.
“We've kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”
Locked Items = Poor CX
Unsurprisingly, Wentworth’s blunt remarks sparked a lot of debate among the customer service and experience community, with almost everyone agreeing that the decision to store more products behind lock and key is counterproductive to a good customer experience.
In a Reddit thread on the topic, a number of customers shared examples of their own shopping experiences at Walgreens and other stores that operate similar shoplifting precautions.
In a sentiment that was shared by many, a Reddit user named SecretPresentation54, wrote:
"As soon as I see it's locked up, I turn around and order it off Amazon. Sometimes right there in the aisle so I don't forget.
"I'm not paging someone or hunting an employee down for deodorant."
At a time when companies like Amazon can provide such a convenient service, one of the major CX advantages to in-store retail is the speed at which a customer can pick up an item.
Adding this additional friction to the shopping journey is clearly frustrating customers. Even those who will persevere the first time this occurs have suggested that they will avoid stores operating a lock and key system moving forward.
This point was summed up nicely by Reddit user, Naganobu, who wrote:
Every time you add another roadblock between the customer getting the item, purchasing it and walking out is another opportunity for the customer to re-evaluate how badly they need the item and if there are alternatives elsewhere.
Another common complaint raised across the forums is the atmosphere that keeping items behind bars creates.