DES MOINES, Iowa — Having spent 18 years with Target Corp. before his current eight-year tenure at Kum & Go, Marty Roush, vice president of operations for the chain of more than 400 c-stores, loves brick-and-mortar retail. But comparing the two experiences, he says he appreciates convenience retailing more.
“The frequency of customers and the connection the teams have directly with our customers is truly amazing. [It’s] really the biggest surprise for me coming from big-box retail into the convenience space,” he says. “They really do know our customers, and it’s fascinating and fun. When we look at our [internal] surveys, the customer is what our associates enjoy—it’s in their top three. And … when we survey our customers, one of the most frequent comments we get is around our associates.”
The company invests a lot in its store associates. A couple of years ago, Kum & Go changed the composition of its store personnel from primarily part time to mostly full time.
“With improved benefits, set schedules and a higher number of full-time associates in stores, it’s a lot easier to retain them, so it has helped our turnover,” he says. “It is easier to hire an associate if you can tell them ahead of time what they’re schedule is going to be and that they are always going to get 40 hours and what the available benefits are. It’s definitely easier to hire those associates. And they become more committed to you, so they’re willing to do those routine things like clean the restrooms.”
Customers have even been known to follow associates to a new store, Roush says.
After several years participating in the CSP Intouch Insight Mystery Shop, Kum & Go has instituted an associate incentive program based on the retailer’s mystery shop results by store.
“All associates have a stake in their store execution and store results as tied to the results of their specific store mystery shop,” Roush says. “The store associates love that because they view that as something they can control at the store level. If you show another metric—you can choose any number of metrics—the associate might say I can’t touch that or I can’t affect that at my location. The mystery shop is something that they can control or that they perceive that they can control.”