We've had our Integrated GS since the middle of May. This happened with our store remodel, too.
I'm not too thrilled with the move..as looseseal has said, the photo lab and the registry kiosks are so far away that the only time we know that someone needs help is for them to come to GS and say that they need help. Oh...doing the bathroom check is time consuming in that it takes a persoon away from the GS area.
The reshop sorting in the smart carts is very annoying to me. They fill up pretty quickly.....especially with back to school reshop.....and don't even get me started on how the sales floor members have to come to empty the smart carts into a regular cart.
The new area that's behind GS is not very big (the smart carts & then the cart for defectives) and it gets full way too quickly.
When we have returns now, the process is very cumbersome. When a guest returns an item we have to take the item behind our "new" GS area and put it in reshop. Also, the garbage cans for recycle bags & hangers is at one end and the register we use most is at the other end. Before when a guest returned an item, all we had to do was turn around, take a couple of steps, toss the return item in its appropriate cart and then turn back to the next guest. Now, I find that I don't have the time to put stuff back between returns and so the counter area gets full pretty quickly.
The printers for the "toss" , "salvage", "CRC" are not in a place that gives us room to get the stickers and then place the items in the correct location.
The bags we use for placing items in are now sitting on a shelf and we have to pick-up the roll each time we need a bag. Before, our bags fit nicely in a drawer and it was easy to pull the bags and the strip ties without any problems.
Guests are still confused with the "new" return area...and people want to check-out at the return desk when they have 50 items. We really try to tell people that the return area checkout are for 10 items or less.
We can't see One Spot from the checklanes so it is difficult to try to get it zoned.
And somehow it seems that, even though GS is right next to the check lanes, the GS desk is left uncovered for long periods of time. And it can be just as difficult for the GSTL or the GSA to get free from GS to come over to help at a register.....especially when we need to get a DPCI & a price check.
As far as I am concerned, I think that the idea of the integrated GS is a good one, but they way it has ended-up being set-up is a royal pain in the neck.
In our store, we generally only have one person at GS...so that really makes things difficult with the registries and photo lab.