Decathlon Uses Qmatic to Make the Checkout Experience Smoother and Faster

Decathlon is one of the best-known and best-loved sports equipment retailers in the world. With over 1,100 shops in 27 countries, the company strives to “make the pleasure and benefits of sport accessible to all”. Decathlon‘s mission is reflected in the way the company designs, produces, and sells products with excellent value for money, encourages respect for the environment, pays close attention to internal and external relationships, and places a strong emphasis on innovation.

Making the customer journey more fluid and smoother

The company‘s innovative transformation began when Decathlon decided to redesign some of its points of sale. “When we began redesigning our checkout areas, we realized we would need a solution which was in alignment with our new concept“, stated Donato Favale, Area Operation Manager at Decathlon Italy.

During this transformation, Decathlon needed a technology that would speed up payment times, making the move through the checkout area more fluid and smoother. The aim was to get rid of traditional queueing once and for all, while still ensuring all checkouts could work to the same degree of productivity and efficiency, thereby offering an improved overall service for customers.

Decathlon considered a number of different technologies which could help the company provide a unique and special experience to its customers. However, many of the options were deemed to not meet the store‘s needs or were too complex from an infrastructure point of view. Until Qmatic came up with a solution that would match the needs. 

Decathlon and Qmatic, therefore, started work on their first project, planning out the specific journey taken through the store: before reaching the checkout area, customers see dedicated messages informing them that there is a Single Queue system. A monitor then informs the customer which checkout they should go to, providing visual and audio information. The use of colors and graphical elements on the checkout displays helps customers find their way, making the purchasing experience both simple and pleasant.

After a successful pilot project was launched at the store in Corsico (province of Milan), Qmatic was then introduced at numerous other stores run by Decathlon and is now improving the customer experience for Decathlon customers in 35 stores all around Italy.

“Our customers really appreciate these technological advances. We are now planning to extend the number of installations in other outlets. We will also be using Qmatic to gather and analyze statistics providing valuable information on store performance. This will help us to keep improving the purchasing experience for our customers.”

Donato Favale, Area Operation Manager, Decathlon Italy

Decathlon also chooses to use Qmatic to manage its queue in its Fiumicino outlet Cycling department where Qmatic's platform sends customers an SMS, notifying them when it is their turn. This makes it possible for customers to relax and continue looking around the store while they wait. Using Qmatic, Decathlon has been able to reduce waiting times and increase the productivity of the checkout procedure - creating a seamless customer journey.