Take-Aways From Chick-fil-A – People, Process, and Technology

In my latest blog post, I am sharing a point-of-view piece on my takeaways from Chick-fil-A’s People, Process & Technology. The full post is available on the Cyber Group website here. I am sharing an overview with my LinkedIn network below.

Being a mom of two teenagers, Chick-fil-A is a favorite in our house. You can count on the consistency in good food, great customer service, fast and extremely efficient delivery, and up to date technology to boot! Now that’s what a busy mom calls my pleasure!

At my recent visit, I couldn’t help but wonder how we can all incorporate a little bit of the “Chick-fil-A Way” into our own busy lives and careers. With the Pandemic being the new “norm,” I marvel at how well Chick-fil-A has pivoted. They are truly a shining example of the Golden Triangle: People, Process, and Technology.

People

The Chick-fil-A employee is wired and trained to provide excellent service.

Without good people, nothing will really work well. How does Chick-fil-A find such good people and train them to provide such excellent service? I did some digging and observing and this is what I found.

·      They are thorough in their hiring, and in their training. They strive

to ingrain their culture and hospitality in every employee. It’s the Chick-fil-A way after all.

·      They keep their team members comfortable while working with fans to keep them cool

outside in the hot Texas Summer, and tents for rainy days or blistering sun.

o  Did you know the uniforms they wear are selected primarily for comfort? Chick-fil-A wants to make sure their employees feel confident and comfortable as they serve. 87% of Chick-fil-A employees mentioned their uniforms were one of the most important factors in their overall job satisfaction. That’s a lot of happiness!

·      They teach behaviors referred to as the Core 4: make eye contact, share a smile, speak enthusiastically & stay connected.

Their hard work in hiring, training, and and caring for their employees pays off and I am certain Chick-fil-A’s team members carry these life lessons they learn with them throughout their careers.

Process

It wasn’t always smooth sailing for the Chick-fil-A store in my hometown of McKinney. They had to evolve like most companies, and they had to pivot quickly with COVID. When Chick-fil-A first opened in

McKinney, I remember clearly how much of a nightmare it was to go there. Long, slow lines, even going out into the street. They received numerous complaints and they listened… really listened and acted on it quickly.

Today, they are a modern assembly line of near perfection. You can often see Chick-fil-A employees walking the drive-thru lines with state-of-the-art tablets. This allows for orders to be taken while maintaining one on one service. Once your order is taken, off you go to the next team member for payment. One scan of your app or swipe of your card allows for no contact during COVID. This fast payment allows for cars to move through twice as fast as a traditional speaker box drive-thru. Chick-fil-A likes to call this system “face to face ordering.”

With COVID, they now use plastic containers to deliver food, preventing personal contact. Leaving nothing out, Chick-fil-A also has “expeditors” who stand by the drive-thru window and take orders to cars that are further back in line. It’s almost like a mini “army” outside in the drive-thru, ready to shuttle you through with ease. It’s a brilliant show to watch. It truly feels like they have it all together and you need not worry!

It’s not only the food that is good; it truly is the incredible people and service. It reminds me of how Cyber Group strives to be in all ways. The client-customer partnership and trust are critical in my IT consulting world today.

Trust is essential, along with good technology! While other stores were scrambling to adjust with COVID, Chick-fil-A made a fast pivot. It was almost like they were ready. Being up to date with the current technology definitely helped big time.

Technology

Speaking of technology, Chick-fil-A has its very own app, called Chick-fil-A One. Customer service is oozing through the app. It’s all in the experience. From the Mobile App to the IOS tablets for orders, down to the Business Intelligence and the Data Analytics, along with AI and now speech technology and voice processing, Chick-fil-A is technically savvy. What a great example to learn from, of a company that pivoted in a Pandemic, and is continuing to evolve. These are the companies that will persevere and survive.

I am fascinated at the work that goes into the whole Chick-fil-A experience, and the time spent to improve on this. From a recent article with Jay Duff, Jay mentions, “Of course, we serve a great chicken sandwich, but its’ the customer experience that we keep our eyes focused on. We see some promising technologies with speech and voice that would enhance that. Having worked in the store, I know how difficult it is to work a Point of Sale system while you're trying to keep track of the customer’s orders and especially if they have any alterations to their order, like no pickles. I’m spending all this time trying to get the order right, and what happens is our dialogue kind of suffers when I’m not able to maintain eye contact. Because I’m too busy trying to figure out the exception on my point of sales system. So, we can see how speech and voice processing is going to help with that.”

Lessons to Take Away

My take-away is that we can all benefit a little from the Chick-fil-A way. Having a goal to improve our experiences with each other, learn from each other, help in ways that we can, and grow to do better. Like Chick-fil-A, go the second mile when you can. I hope you enjoyed my take-away’s – my teenagers were my inspiration, along with my IT role at Cyber Group. Let me know if I can help you in any way.

It was my pleasure!