Here is an interesting article from today's Mail on Sunday:
Unidentified
voiceover in the bagging area: So who is the woman behind 'unexpected item' warnings driving shoppers mad at self-service tills?
They are words guaranteed to induce dread in any supermarket shopper: 'Unexpected item in the bagging area. Please remove item before continuing.' The voice is not quite Joanna Lumley, Penelope Keith or Valerie Singleton.
However, the tone is unmistakable. It is she who must be obeyed. The robotic command issued by self-service tills in supermarkets around the country has become the bane of modern life.
More often than not the super-sensitive alarm is triggered by a carelessly placed handbag or rucksack. And so peremptory is the tone of the voice, people assume it is computer-generated.
The leading manufacturer of self-checkouts, National Cash Register Company, is coy about the woman whose authoritative manner won her the voiceover job.
Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the message repeated endlessly at 10,000 automated tills at five of our biggest supermarket chains, including Tesco, Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer, is rather more human than it seems.
But while the sat nav industry is proud to promote its invisible stars, who include half-a-dozen mature British actresses with beautifully modulated voices, along with a few jokey contributors such as Brian Blessed and John Cleese, the identity of the woman behind the checkout voice is a secret.
The leading manufacturer of self-checkouts, National Cash Register Company (NCR), is coy about the woman whose authoritative manner won her the job. 'Her identity is a closely-guarded secret.
'We wouldn't want our competitors to take on the same voice,' says Helen McInnes, spokeswoman for the multi-billion-dollar American company, which has supplied self-checkouts to 80 per cent of UK retailers since 2002.
She explains how NCR selected 'The Voice': 'The person has been chosen for having a calming voice and an approachable manner.' In laboratory and shop studies, customers 'overwhelmingly responded better to the female voice'.
The voice, although irritating to some, has to issue instructions in a non-confrontational way. However tardy your response, she is above displaying her own irritation or reproaching you as you attempt to cram your buy-one-get-one-free and money-off specials into plastic bags that refuse to open without application of spit and ritual rubbing.
And The Mail on Sunday has discovered a potentially unnerving phenomenon that will be coming to a store near you: the voice is about to get personal. Researchers at NCR's base in Atlanta, Georgia, are developing a programme to customise The Voice's prompts and commands for individual shoppers.
The first people to experience this service will be so-called 'super-users' who use self-checkouts most often. So the next time you swipe your loyalty card at the self-checkout, the
voiceover might address you by name and say farewell with a cheery: 'Have a good day.'
It's another reason to agree with Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King when he admits: 'Self-checkouts are like Marmite: you either love them or loathe them.'
