World-Class Customer Service: How Chick-fil-A gets a Young Workforce to Deliver

The most common complaint I get from my audiences and consulting clients is about how bad the young labor force is and how this generation doesn't want to work hard. I cannot disagree more. This is a crutch leaders use to avoid improving employee culture and building a strong recruiting and onboarding experience.

If the younger generation is so poor, how do The Ritz-Carlton, Chick-fil-A, Apple, Starbucks, Nordstrom, and John Robert's Spa consistently produce a consistently excellent customer experience with the same generation?

Coach them up

Competency is important to Chick-fil-A's recipe, but it is not the priority in their selection process. Most companies start with competency. However, competency can be taught, and in many customer-interacting positions, you can find employees with similar skill sets. Chick-fil-A prioritizes character and chemistry over competency, and it begins with a conversation.

During the interview process, Chick-fil-A focuses on asking, "Why do you want to do this?" The "what" and the "how" are elementary, but the candidate's "why" reveals authenticity. After the initial interview, Chick-fil-A deepens the strategy, testing whether this person wants to do this job and whether existing employees want the potential candidate as a colleague. They put prospective hires in a restaurant, observe them, and give them time to shadow existing employees. The candidate can see what the job requires and get a feel for if it is right for them. Managers also get a feel for the candidate.

Create emotional bonds

Chick-fil-A says its service is consistent because it invests more than other companies in training employees and helping them advance their careers--regardless of whether those careers are in fast food. The company creates emotional bonds with its employees.

Leaders are encouraged to ask new hires about career goals and try to help workers achieve them. "Do you know the dreams of your team?" leaders are constantly asked. For Kevin Moss, a Chick-fil-A manager of more than 20 years, supporting his team has meant funding an employee's marketing degree and paying another worker to take photography classes.

Moss says he tries to support employees in times of need. For example, if an employee's family member is in the hospital, he will send food to the family and hospital staff. "I've found people are more motivated and respond better when you care about them," Moss told Business Insider.

This best-in-class, customer experience-leading company offers leadership positions in all of its restaurants with increased pay and responsibilities. Crew members can work toward director positions in marketing, cleanliness, kitchen operations, and drive-thru operations. "The better we train, the longer people stay with us," Moss says. It is a focus on bringing out the best in people so that the best can then be offered.

Employee experience

We can look to Chick-fil-A's business model to see why it's an industry leader in the restaurant business year after year. It goes beyond basics, such as food quality, restaurant cleanliness, and speed of service. It's about more than chicken sandwiches. Chick-fil-A's leaders know there is a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.

Training employees to deliver superior customer service begins with high standards in employee selection. This means choosing people with high character who exhibit chemistry with existing employees, investing in their training, offering leadership positions, and supporting their goals outside their Chick-fil-A roles. This approach attracts and retains great talent, leads to frictionless customer experience, inspires customer loyalty, and keeps the company tops in customer satisfaction.

Chick-fil-A is meticulous about whom it selects to run its restaurants (operators and team leaders) and work in its restaurants (team members). Chick-fil-A's selection process for franchisees is impressive. The company receives about 20,000 applications annually for franchises and awards only about 100 new stores annually. How many institutions do you know that have a 0.5% acceptance rate? Harvard University's acceptance rate hovers around 5%, about ten times higher than Chick-fil-A's. Bain & Company's acceptance rate for 60,000 or so recent college grads who applied for jobs last year ran just under 2%, reinforcing how picky Chick-fil-A is.

Talent magnet

Chick-fil-A's widespread reputation for offering a world-class customer experience filters out potential candidates who are looking for only paychecks as well as those who don't want to be held to a high standard or make a positive impact.

Chick-fil-A places tremendous importance on selecting amazing leaders. One of their primary decision filters for making informed decisions when selecting the best leaders is asking, "Is this someone who cares about others and will pour genuine love and care into their team? And is this someone I would want my child to work for? Also, is it apparent that these values are part of this potential employee's lifestyle outside the workplace?"

When the core team of leaders (operators and their top directors) consists of these kinds of people, great talent gets interested. So many companies view recruiting and talent as if it's "throw out the line and drag in the fish." But what if that fish wants to jump into the boat? Magnets attract, and when you start with a quality core of leaders, quality is reeled in.

John DiJulius III, author of The Customer Service Revolution, is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies, such as Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Contact him at 216-839-1430 or [email protected].