Optimize The Convenient Store Experience

QuikTrip – This is a privately held company headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Quiktrip has done to the convenient store industry what Zappos, Amazon, Starbucks, & Chick-fil-A have done to theirs; ignored conventional wisdom, broke the model, and revolutionized an entire industry. Understand, the dynamics of the convenient store industry are 24/7 hours of operation, low front-line wages, and an average turnover rate of 300%.

Walking their talk – Quiktrip’s mission: “To provide opportunity for employees to grow and succeed.” Those are not just words on a plaque. They are truly committed to their employees. They hire employees on the basis of their people skills, and put them first. They pay them generously and promote from within. They believe employee compensation is more important than profits and the bottom-line. Full-time hires get regular medical insurance together with a reimbursement plan from day one. Their time-off policy is unheard of for front-line employees. Not only do employees get from 10 to 25 vacation days a year (depending on tenure) plus 10 days of sick pay, they can buy two extra weeks off, and request an additional 10 days without pay, no questions asked. Rather than calling in sick on the morning of an absence, an employee can just request in advance a day off, giving management a heads-up opportunity to re-staff without a disruption of service. As a result, Quiktrip has created an “employer market” resulting in over 1,000 job applications a week.

Results – QuikTrip has grown into a $10 billion+ company with 13,000 employees and over 650 stores in eleven states. Those revenues place QuikTrip high on the Forbes listing of largest privately held companies. Fortune magazine has ranked QuikTrip high on the list of “Best Companies To Work For” the last ten years.

Major League Customer Service – Many times professional athletes get a bad rap, sometime fairly. A few weeks ago, Los Angeles Dodger’s star, Matt Kemp, did the most incredible gesture for a fan. First you need to know all the circumstances. The Dodger’s were playing their archrivals, the San Francisco Giants, in San Fran. The game just ended, where the Giants swept the Dodgers. So Matt Kemp wasn’t in a friendly environment and couldn’t have been too happy losing three in a row to the Giants. However, Kemp more than won a few hearts in San Francisco this night by handing over a good part of his uniform to a terminal ill young boy named Joshua. You have to watch the video to appreciate the spontaneous gesture of a first-class person, Matt Kemp.

Johnism

When a problem arises with a Customer, we have the opportunity to own the Customer for life.