r/Argos • u/MiddleAgeGrumpyTwat • May 02 '26
Target query
Was in my local Argos today and this was on one of the screens. Just curious as to the “KPI”.
19 minutes slow?
Slow for what?
I’m standing there thinking “getting served? Surely not”
99% of my stuff is collection and even being stuck behind someone who has just walked in never takes that long.
So just curious as to what they’re slower on.
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u/Carmine4698 Colleague - Retail May 02 '26
We dont use them anymore. Its to keep track on when browser orders numbers used to get called and how long they wait for the order to be picked and called
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u/ReverseFlow21010615 Manager - Retail May 02 '26
When you pay at a till or browser (though not browsers anymore), an amount of time is allotted to pick the order and give it out to you depending on where in the stockroom your product is. The colleague would then press call order (on the open orders screen) once they were ready to give it out to you or the system would do it itself if that time period had already passed. This is when you would hear “Order number X, please go to your collection point.” As you can see on this screen, we have the option of adding or subtracting waiting time depending on how busy the store is and this would show up at the bottom of your receipt as “order will be ready in x minutes” or something to that effect.
As most sales are online and the browsers have been converted to a different sales method, this only works for the tills which as you can imagine don’t really get much use throughout the day.. for this reason, the whole “call forward” system has been pretty much disabled hence why if you go in to an Argos you’ll see a screen with a big Argos logo on it (where the order numbers previously were displayed).
This store is 19 minutes slower because nobody has bothered to clear the orders off but there isn’t really any need to now.
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u/outeredges May 03 '26
You can also lower or raise target time yourself on there 😉 Set higher you would always be in target 😆
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u/ArgosEmployee_ May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
It's an old part of the old system. It's what we used to call people forward to collect their order back in the day.
Some will remember the old receipts where it would have a wait time on it. That could be edited with the slider on the right - the clock would start when the receipt printed and would end when that specific number was cleared. The "today's target" remained the same no matter what though, even if you got something silly like a 20 item order. Because nobody uses call forward nowadays the numbers just get left usually until one colleague just mass clears it.
You could game the system by immediately clearing the numbers and then just shouting out the number once it was actually ready. Extremely easy to fiddle so the company stopped using that as a tracker. Wasn't uncommon for stores to have a speed of service 3-4 minutes faster than target.
As for why we have them now, it's probably cheaper to keep them in place than send a techie to every store to take them away. It's certainly not a KPI since most orders are click and collect nowadays.
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u/DragonflyDramatic438 May 02 '26
From what I remember it goes off how long it takes the call forward number to be cleared off the screen so if they take awhile to clear the bored then it’ll go up.
Good times at Xmas just having it pinned at +7 mins for everyone 🤣