Market leader
Krystal manager inspires workers on customer service, career possibilities
This Krystal restaurant stands along Lamar, a depressed commercial corridor of barbed and razor wire, window bars, countless used-car lots, pawn shops, strip joints, weeds and vacancies.
Inside the sparkling “quick service” eatery ringed with windows and flooded with sunlight, Kalesia Vaughn rallies 10 of her cashiers in a training session.
The Florence, Ala., native is something of a phenom within Krystal, having started as a cashier 12 years ago at age 22, receiving three performance-based promotions her first year and becoming a regional manager — Krystal’s label is market leader — within five years.
Krystal has 10 company-owned restaurants in Memphis, and three months ago it put this challenging one at 3675 Lamar under her oversight. It’s one of six she leads, the others being in Florence; Corinth, Miss.; Jackson, Tenn.; Lawrenceburg, Tenn.; and Tupelo, Miss., where she is based.
Customer receipts include an incentive to fill out an online survey. Over the past four weeks, the restaurant’s customersatisfaction rating rocketed up from a weak score, by 24 percentage points.
Make this Krystal a neighborhood “oasis,” Vaughn implores the young men and women huddled with her in the restaurant’s front corner. Soothe them with big smiles, sincere greetings and exceptional customer service.
During the hourlong session, one cashier recited the old saying that the customer is always right.
“You know what?” Vaughn responds. “They are not always right. But who are you to tell them they are wrong? Do you want to argue with someone over fries?”
What if a customer, upon receiving his food, claimed he’d ordered a Coke, too, but hadn’t received it.
“What I hear typically (from cashiers) is, ‘Can I see your receipt?’ ’’ Vaughn says.
“How much does it cost, Chris, to give a Coke away?” she asks Chris Morgan, the restaurant’s general manager. “Twelve cents,” Morgan says. So instead of checking the receipt, Vaughn advises, “Say, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get you a Coke.’
“We make mistakes. The person may have ordered a Coke and we didn’t hear him. Tell the manager, ‘I’m going to get this customer a Coke because I left it off the order.’ It didn’t cost us anything. But if we go back and forth, guess what? We’re going to lose business. We’re going to agitate that customer even more. Twelve cents? Was it worth it?”
What if a customer complains about onions, which is what the fast-food chain’s signature item — little square hamburger — is cooked in.
Offer to scrape them off and ask if she’d like to have fries on the house.
What if a customer places the order, reaches into his pocket and declares he forgot that he left his money at home?
Give him the combo with a smile and suggest he pays next time he visits, Vaughn says.
“You have the power to do that,” she says.
The key is happy customers, return business and the revenue that generates, Vaughn says.
These cashiers start at minimum wage. Fast-food jobs are often the butt of jokes — “You want fries with that?” – but Vaughn says she’s living proof they can be the first rung of a tall ladder.
“People think of it as a dead-end job,” she says. “It’s only dead-end to those who don’t have the desire. But for those who do have desire and are coachable, the sky is the limit.
“To me, it didn’t even seem hard. It seemed like the door just kept opening every time. It was opening so fast I got a little nervous.”
Vaughn even declined the first offer to make her a general manager, thinking the promotion had come before she was ready.
“She’s somebody who has grown up in the brand,” says her current supervisor, Mike Root, director of operations for a Krystal zone that encompasses Nashville, Huntsville and Memphis.
She’s a market leader “who is super high energy,” Root says. “She has a very strong leadership presence. When she walks in the room, the room lights up. She has that kind of personality.”
Vaughn has yet to lose a general manager to turn- over since she has become an area manager.
Morgan has been GM at the Lamar restaurant about a year. He brought out two sales-motivational books Vaughn is having him read.
“Since I have been under her, I can honestly say she is one of the best motivators due to her experience and knowledge of the business,” Morgan says. “I have learned tremendously under her.”
More Memphians may get a chance. Krystal, an Atlanta firm with 387 restaurants in 11 states, last week started building a new restaurant on Winchester at Malco Way in Hickory Hill. Each Krystal employs 30 to 40 people.
And, Root said, the company has been looking at a building site for another in Cordova.
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