The top reason why front-line convenience-store employees quit their jobs is because of stress and negative experiences, said Matt Riezman, partner at NexChapter, a consulting firm for convenience stores based in Des Moines, Iowa, at CSP's Convenience Retailing University in Nashville, Tennessee.
There are 1.3 million more retail jobs in the United States than people looking for this type of work monthly, according to Federal Reserve data, but creating a better employee experience could turn this around, Riezman said.
Forty-two percent of retailers who have top-quartile employee experience scores also have top-quartile customer experience scores, according to a McKinsey study, so it’s a win-win, he said.
Riezman talked through five tech strategies that could improve the employee experience and lead to a better customer experience.
Operations Management Systems
Operations management systems combine individual tasks like temperature logs, maintenance requests, checklists, incident reports, communications, audits and more, into fewer systems. Employees spend less time learning and jumping between multiple systems and more time interacting with customers or doing other tasks.
Learning Management Systems
Train employees in the same way they consume media, Riezman said, like with short videos or interactive quizzes.
This can lead to higher training satisfaction, improved completion rate, lower turnover and improved policy compliance, which all helps to drive the customer experience.
Predictive Scheduling
Another tool to ease labor of managers is predictive scheduling.
Here’s how it works: Managers input business data—historic sales, competitive data, weather and more—and employee data—when they want to work, what they are trained on, their preferences and more—into the system. Then, it generates a schedule that managers review before sharing it with employees.
Employees benefit from a predictable schedule and workload, and managers benefits from less time scheduling. Plus, if the ideal amount of labor is in the store for more of the day, it results in fewer lines, better stocked shelves and a better customer experience, Riezman said.
Kitchen Management Systems
Riezman said that some c-store retailers reported to NexChapter that they don’t need kitchen management systems, but he disagrees. Kitchen management systems can combine disparate systems and processes, automate planning production and ingredient management and require less training.
In turn, employees can stay focused on food prep and customer service. Retailers see increased product consistency and optimized waste and out of stocks for prepared foods and ingredients, he said.
AI Enabled Hardware
Artificial intelligence (AI) can also ease labor, Riezman said.
“A lot of AI conversations, when it comes to employee experience, tend to become about someone watching you or looking over your shoulder,” he said. “But generative AI is a tool. If I can have a tool help me be better at my job, I would want to use it.”
Retailers can rely on cameras for inventory management, for example. The tech can monitor shelves to not only notify employees when there is an empty space that needs filled, but it can also track data to predict when shelves will need to be restocked.
AI cameras can also be used to identify fraud before it happens from detected movements and improve security.
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