To help us better understand what drives the returning winner of the CSP/Service Intelligence Mystery Shop survey of large convenience chains, Steve Schweiger, an assistant store leader in training for La Crosse, Wis.-based Kwik Trip, agreed to play a word-association game.
Hot dogs: “Buns.”
Godzilla: “Destruction.”
Kwik Trip: “Awesome. No—family.”
In doing so, he began to describe a corporate vibe that makes him excited to come to work every day, one that’s confi rmed with each new person he meets at Kwik Trip. It’s a cultural current that powers this idealistic yet grounded $5 billion business.
“It’s like the Golden Rule on steroids,” says the 34-year-old trainee. “The people are all about, ‘What can we do to make your job easier, better? We’re here for you. Call us. Here’s my number.’ It’s an open atmosphere that’s humble to new ideas.”
Capturing the top ranking amid some of the industry’s most competitive c-store chains (see list, p. 55) is no small feat. But to do it over and over again—four times in the past fi ve years—translates into a high degree of tenacity to keep floors clean, shelves stocked and customers feeling attended to and cared for.
Time and again, Kwik Trip offi cials point to the company’s people. But it’s not just the people—it’s also the people’s attitudes. It’s something that John McHugh, who works in corporate communications and leadership development for Kwik Trip, says already exists in people before they’re hired.
“The best customer service comes instinctively,” he says. “We look for people who find joy in doing that.”
So finding that person is where it all starts. Finding people such as Steve Schweiger (pictured above, wearing the chicken).
Though Schweiger had been in retail management for 11 years, the culture at his previous employer, a bigbox merchant in the Milwaukee market, was beginning to wear him down. The people above his position were sending him “problem” employees and forcing him to fi nd reasons to fire them.
Instead, he coached those individuals, and nine out of 10 of them showed a turnaround in performance. “I’d rather help people than see them fail,” Schweiger says.
Comparing the corporate atmosphere at his old job to Kwik Trip was like night and day. While people were impersonal and aloof there, at Kwik Trip they’re friendly, hospitable and genuinely concerned. His past employer led by fear, pushing corporate mandates down to employees with little or no initial input or time for feedback. At Kwik Trip, he feels a sense of empowerment, where incentives exist for people to “do the right thing.”
What that means on a higher level, Schweiger says, is exactly what its mission statement says: treating others how you’d like to be treated. It’s a message that reaches back to his word-association response of “family.”
He sees that sense of family in how the company promotes from within. “Many people at the home office have been a store leader; they’ve been in our shoes,” he says. “They know what it means to run a facility, so when you call them for support, they know how to answer your questions.”
The sensibility Schweiger is responding to is what McHugh would say goes beyond a paycheck. It’s the deeper satisfaction of “knowing you’ve done something to make a difference. How can we make sure our people are happy and find happiness in helping other people?”
In the mid-2000s, Kwik Trip found itself in the midst of an internal reckoning. Growth into foodservice and a more extensive vertical integration meant a larger corporate reassessment, one in which issues of store cleanliness and customer service would become paramount. That soul searching led them to further embrace the company’s mission of helping others and making a difference. They started hammering that mission statement home at every meeting, in every training session and, most recently, in more consistent communication of stories customers tell of the kindness they received at Kwik Trip stores.
The stories are about workers helping rain-soaked travelers put tarps on their belongings, a woman who left her coupons at home still being able to get her discounts, and someone whose relative collapsed in a store receiving the full attention of staff. “Instinctively, all of that has to be in place,” McHugh says. “In letters, customers have told us, ‘I was impressed at how co-workers gave eye contact and thanked me. It encourages me to come back.’ ”
The caring qualities start with store leadership, McHugh says. They look for leaders who can work with a diverse set of people, motivating them in the high-stress environment of a busy c-store. “If there’s an issue of a store consistently not providing strong customer service, fi rst we’ll look at the leadership at the store,” McHugh says. “We want to make sure that person is a decent human being and the right person leading the ship. We also have a lengthy training program, so when leaders come through, they know how to confront poor performance and motivate the team.”
Always Looking
If Rich Bower is walking through a neighborhood gathering, he may not be drawn to the “life of the party,” especially if Bower is looking—and he almost always is—for candidates to recruit as new store leaders.
As retail management recruiter for Kwik Trip, Bower says that while being outgoing, energetic and fun is very important, “Often the people I’m looking for don’t draw attention to themselves. If I’m at aparty and the person is saying, ‘I did this, or I did that,’ it’s not someone I’m interested in.”
Bower wants to know if that person enjoys helping others, talks about family or has a history of volunteer work. “Those are things that will draw me,” he says.
And he’s constantly recruiting. He works through conventional means, such as online resume posts or referrals from Kwik Trip employees; and more active means, such as when he’s in a restaurant. If he sees an employee or a manager exhibiting great customer service, he strikes up a conversation. He says his wife has seen him do it so often, she sometimes jumps in with questions.
His worst nightmare is picking someone who’s the wrong fi t. “I’ve got 11,000 team members and it’s my job to make the right choice,” he says. “If [owner] Don Zietlow walks up and feels this person’s not the right fit, I don’t ever want him to think, ‘Did Rich recruit that person? What was he thinking?’ ”
Other factors also can come into play. Different zone leaders like different types of people. Some prefer people with more experience, while others prefer newer ones they can mold and mentor. The candidates themselves have to be willing to work in different locations or possibly relocate, so sometimes it’s not a fi t in that respect.Bower met Schweiger through an in-house referral, with Schweiger looking for a more supportive work environment. Bower saw in him an enthusiastic, concerned manager who had a history of leading large numbers of employees
And Schweiger wasn’t the only one with those traits. That type of background led Bower to bring on Phillip Heldt, now an assistant store leader in Bonduel, Wis., who spent 25 years in the U.S. Navy. He ended his time there as a senior chief operations specialist.
Heldt says Bower reached him via an online resume posting. Though Heldt initially didn’t picture himself working for a convenience chain, he took the interview as a practice face-to-face meeting for an upcoming interview in Washington, D.C.
After talking with Bower, Heldt was taken aback by Kwik Trip’s generous incentive programs (among them a well-known 40% pretax profi t-sharing bonus to employees at the end of the year), its successful track record and team-based focus—all that in an area in which he and his wife grew up in and wanted to raise their family. It was a great fit.
In talking about the traits he brought to the table, Heldt cites honesty and integrity, plus the fact that daily he had managed almost 200 people while in the military.
“Every company has a hard time leading people effectively,” he says. “You have rules and regulations, but things don’t always happen that way. You should naturally help people, care about people, but sadly, we have lost that.”Motivating a large staff means managing a host of different personalities, Heldt says. It’s a skill that takes patience, energy and innate people skills.Of course, finding Mr. Right is not exclusive to gender. April Hoesly, a store leader at the Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., location where Schweiger is training, says having the passion and enthusiasm to connect with the customer is a critical part of the job.
Growing up on a farm, she says her parents taught her that 90% of her day was about attitude. She learned that a great attitude will always get her through a bad day. It’s a mindset that turns a shopper into a guest, a store into an extension of her home. In her 13 years at Kwik Trip since starting part time in high school, she’s seen that culture get stronger, especially in the past few years.
That kind of purpose has to be genuine, she says. “Whenever I do hiring or ask anyone about why they want to work here, I can tell if they are fudging an answer or saying things by the book,” Hoesly says. “You’ve got to have passion and enthusiasm for the guy coming in for milk and you’re the only conversation he’ll have with someone that day. If you watch any one of our co-workers … they do [the job] for a purpose. Even if we … have a bad day, we understand we’re making a difference. I do what I do to give them an awesome experience. They come here for [that] value, not just milk, bread or bananas.”
Chains Up Their Game
Food offerings drive gains in service, cleanliness
Chains studied in the annual CSP/Service Intelligence Mystery Shop are, as a whole, pulling up their average scores, giving the impression that their focus on foodservice is elevating store cleanliness and the customer experience, according to Service Intelligence.
Top-ranked Kwik Trip’s scores jumped almost 5 percentage points from its overall average of 90.9% in 2012 to 95.2% this year, while the average for the group overall made a similar jump from 85.2% in 2012 to 90.8% in 2013.
Overall averages in interior and exterior cleanliness are up since 2010, while restroom cleanliness has made another improvement, going from 87.8% to 90.4%. “If you go someplace to eat, it’s something you care about,” says Cameron Watt, vice president and general manager of Service Intelligence, Ft. Mill, S.C. “The industry is actually behaving like it wants to be in foodservice.”
Being in stock and having a variety of baked goods, dispensed beverages and other hot foods have also gone up from past years, Watt said.
Where the industry appears to be falling back is upselling. Over the years, Watt says, his firm has experienced pushback from some chains, which say they’ve decided not to emphasize upselling because customers say they don’t like it.
Overall scores for upselling have languished year after year, with some chains having extremely low marks in that area. Though showing a small improvement over last year (11.1%), the overall average for upselling was still a dismal 12.3% for 2013.
The problem is twofold, Watt says. First, customers in the study say they’re not worried about an upsell, he says. It’s not a main reason why they shop or don’t shop at a store. Second, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) upsell on a regular basis and find it an acceptable means for increasing sales.
“McDonald’s, Subway, these newly stated competitors are very good at suggestive selling,” Watt says. “If done with the right item in the right way by a friendly person, I don’t believe there will be a negative impact on service, but there will be a positive impact on the bottom line.
Interior and Exterior Cleanliness
For RaceTrac Petroleum Inc., the goal is to be the convenience store of choice, which means creating a “wow” experience. That translates into cleanliness and safety, according to Ashleigh Collins, communications manager for the Atlanta-based chain.
RaceTrac squeaked by Kwik Trip to gain the highest overall score for interior cleanliness in the mystery-shop study, but Kwik Trip turned the tables in terms of exterior cleanliness.
Embracing foodservice has been a part of that experience as well, with RaceTrac one of a few old-school fuel jobbers able to succeed in the c-store channel.
“We think outside of our industry,” Collins says, “benchmarking our standards against a wide variety of retailers, from restaurants to grocery stores to QSRs, to ensure we are maintaining the highest standards of cleanliness as we expand our foodservice offering.”
For RaceTrac, consistency in terms of cleanliness revolves around a routine of spot-checking stores. At the beginning of every shift, the in-store team goes through a six-point checklist, which addresses overall cleanliness, food-safety standards, inventory of products, accuracy of signage and specifications in other areas of the location. Managers also regularly perform store walks to ensure the sales fl oor is clean and that shift duties have been handled.
Merchandising
The main ideas behind the category of merchandising are being in stock, and variety. Mike Thornbrugh, manager of public and government affairs for Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip, says it’s a commonsense notion for any retailer, but it’s also something that takes a strong infrastructure to pull off.
“If something is out of stock, that [means] a disappointed customer,” Thornbrugh says. “You failed to meet his or her expectations.”
QuikTrip took the No. 1 spot overall in the category of merchandising. Thornbrugh says his chain has a leg up because it owns and operates its own distribution system, with technology and processes in place to constantly communicate how much of any item is needed, where and when.
In addition to infrastructure, QuikTrip prioritizes store-level execution.
The chain offers highly competitive hourly and salaried wages, with bonuses based on store merchandising and presentation.The chain’s philosophy is to stay consistent with all of its stores, whether the site is in Charlotte, N.C., or Wichita, Kan., Thornbrugh says. “Consistency, especially with products [in the store], is a big deal,” he says. “We have systems in place with our warehouses and our QT Kitchen that [address] how many items were sold, how many are needed and how many were delivered. It’s automatic, so we know per shift what items were sold and how many.”
Customer Service and Employee Appearance
Like cleanliness, customer service and employee appearance relate back to foodservice, says Travis Sheetz, executive vice president of operations for Altoona, Pa.-based Sheetz Inc. The chain did very well in both of these categories.
“I’m not surprised at seeing those scores because with this whole foodservice push, we’ve put an emphasis on hospitality,” he says. “This means looking at the customers in the eye, not being robotic, being friendly. … In the foodservice business, it’s a big deal because you’re serving food to people. We have, without question, put a lot of emphasis on that and trying to get our people to be maybe a little less focused on task stuff like wiping down the counter and [instead] looking people in the eye.”
Like Kwik Trip, Sheetz starts with a focus on hiring the right people. “You can’t necessarily make people be personable and friendly; you’ve got to look for that kind of personality up front when you’re hiring,” he says. “The personality—the character, the friendliness—is more important than anything else in many ways. We can teach them the job, but you can’t change the personality.”
The next step is training employees on company standards. Sheetz is currently going through a training overhaul “where we’re going to have very specific training modules on hospitality.”
The final piece of the puzzle is recognition, Sheetz says. While sometimes monetary rewards are appropriate, often all that’s required is recognition or “showing your employees that [hospitality] is of value to your organization. You’ve got to recognize people for the kind of behavior you’re looking for.
Mystery-Shop Questions Answered
As we travel around North America speaking to people about mystery shopping, we have found that the same questions come up over and over again. We wanted to take this opportunity to share our answers to some of the industry’s most popular questions.
Q. I have heard that mystery shoppers are too easily identified by front-line staff. Is this true?
A. Every year thousands of shoppers successfully complete thousands of shops without any issues. Therefore, if a mystery shopper is identified, the first question you need to ask is why. The answer invariably is that there is a poorly constructed program that requires shoppers to act in a way that is not representative of typical behavior. For example, a mystery shopper should not come to a store, take a picture of the outside, look through shelves for out-of-stock product, check expiration dates and pricing accuracy, take notes (paper or electronic) and then openly time how long he or she was in line. It usually takes just one of these program elements for your staff to start identifying shoppers. It is vital that your mystery-shopping company designs your program to avoid shopper identification from the outset.
If you need to measure items that are not conducive to a mystery shop, overt audit programs are available to measure such items. In this situation, an auditor goes to store locations unannounced, introduces themselves to employees and conducts a thorough evaluation.
Q.Can I trust mystery-shopping program results? I’ve heard that the shoppers often get the answers wrong.
A. A well-managed mystery-shopping program will have multiple quality-assurance mechanisms in place to minimize program errors. Mystery shoppers are people, and people may make the occasional error. This doesn’t mean the data is wrong or should be mistrusted; it just means appropriate controls need to be put in place to catch and minimize errors.
It is worth noting that even with checks and balances in place, your program will be error-prone if your survey is designed poorly. A mystery-shopping company should take into account that the average human can remember only so many details with absolute accuracy. If your shopping program design exceeds those limits, the error rate on your results will increase.
Some programs will claim that shoppers can take notes on paper or a smartphone for improved accuracy and increased details. Of course, until standard shopper behavior in your industry also models this behavior, shopper identification issues will ensue. Your mysteryshopping provider should work with you to design a realistic program with all of these factors in mind, while still allowing you to measure your most important service metrics.
Q. My mystery-shopping scores are usually around 98%; does this mean I am running a good operation?
A. The answer to this is “maybe.” Generally, an indicator of whether you’re running a good operation comes more from what you continue to do with the results than the scores themselves.
Mystery shopping should assist you in not only monitoring your services but also continuously enacting positive change across your business units. Consistently achieving extremely high mystery-shop scores generally indicates that it is time to adjust your mystery-shop survey. If you always reach 100% on an item, it might be time to work with your mystery-shopping company to re-evaluate your survey, increase your standards and/or begin measuring a weaker aspect of your service that you can track and reward improvements.
Q. Should I tie mystery-shopping scores to an incentive program?
A. Incentives are obviously a great way to change behavior. We have found, however, that companies who incent their employees with mystery-shopping scores in isolation may not get the behavior they are looking for. Employees may focus on trying to identify shoppers and challenge or argue the score details instead of focusing on improving the areas identified.
A more effective practice is to have mystery-shop incentive programs linked with other measurements such as sales, audit scores, product turnover rates, etc. In addition to ensuring that the behaviors are focused on improving operations and the bottom line, a broader measurement tool also puts the mystery-shopping results in context with the overall store performance.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.