Are Your Customers Being Kenyonized?

I arrived at the Orlando hotel at 6 p.m. for a national managers meeting I was presenting for the following morning.  I turned on the television in my room and, after a speedy rotation through the channels, discovered that my hometown NBA team was playing on ESPN, and tip-off was only minutes away. Really wanting to catch the game, I decided to pass on a sit-down dinner at the hotel restaurant and, instead, ran directly across the street to a national quick service chicken restaurant to grab a few pieces to eat in my room during the game.

A swift survey of the fast food eatery revealed six workers; five in the kitchen area—of which two appeared to be managers, and the other, a teenager wearing the nametag ‘Kenyon,’ behind the counter.  When it was my turn to order, Kenyon didn’t smile or welcome me; in fact, he didn’t say a word.  He just stared at me as if to say, “You know how this process works… just tell me what you want, I put it on your tray, and you pay me.”  

I placed my order, and he called it back.
 
“Six ninety-one.”  Those are the first—and the only audible words he spoke to me through the entire transaction.
I handed him a ten-dollar bill, and with it, a penny.  This obviously upset Kenyon as he had no idea how to factor in the penny into this transaction.  Thinking I had made some kind of math error, he flicked it back across the counter in my general direction.  Then he keyed into the cash register the sum of $10 and it calculated the change for him of $3.09. Kenyon then pulled out from the drawer three ones, a nickel and four pennies and dumped them onto my empty tray.

I didn’t pick up the change, and immediately said to him in a friendly tone as I pointed to the bills on the tray, “Say, Kenyon, could you give me back two of these dollars in quarters for the pop machine in my hotel across the street?”

“Huh?” He grunted, seeking further clarification.

I elaborated, “I want to get a Diet Coke from the vending machine in the hotel across the street where I am staying, and I need some quarters because the machine might not take these bills.”

I wish I were making this next part up, but it’s the gospel truth.

Kenyon reopened the cash drawer from the register, then reached inside to grab an overflowing handful of quarters. Without counting the quarters (and there were easily 20), he dumped them onto the three $1 bills already on my tray, in essence robbing the register, thinking it was acceptable as it would pacify his customer’s request.   He then turned around, grabbed my chicken from the warmer, and slid it across the counter before grunting out to the customer behind me, “Next.”

As far as Kenyon was concerned, our transaction was history. His manager, Wanda, not ten feet away from us, was totally clueless as to what just happened. Wanda is obviously under the impression that the training Kenyon has received at home, at school, and through his three-day training period at the restaurant has been sufficient enough to place him at command central for her entire operation. But you and I both know, Wanda is horribly mistaken.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. It’s not confined to this particular chicken chain or any other business in the entire food service industry. Disengaged employees like Kenyon can be found in every business and in every industry, and these workers aren’t exclusively those in their teens and early twenties. If you’re lucky and have your antenna up, they’ll stand out like a sore thumb giving you the opportunity to “groom ’em or broom ’em” and you can immediately correct the behavior or send them off to work for your competitor.  Unfortunately, many times the Kenyon’s in your organization are stealthy; flying below the radar to where you’re not even aware how dramatically their poor attitude and performance are actively working against your company goals and objectives.

This puts the onus on business owners and managers to keep an ever-present ear to the ground and an ever-watchful eye on their front lines.  There simply is no substitute for walking around with your eyes open and experiencing your own customer service (or lack thereof) from the perspective of your customers.  Lesson One: Don’t assume that you don’t have any Kenyons working for you. They are everywhere, and you won’t ferret them out without investing your time and energy.

Secondly, you’ve got to have clear channels of communication open with your front liners.  In this particular situation, it’s a sure bet that the other crew members are aware of Kenyon’s incompetence, untrustworthiness, and sloppy service. And even though they don’t want to have to work next to him, they’ll not report their feelings to any manager they don’t feel they can trust or they think won’t listen to them. Lesson Two: Don’t just keep an open door policy with your young cohorts; be proactive in seeking their input. If you work to build their trust and show them that you value their opinions, what you learn from them will keep you in business.

Lesson Three: Train, train, and then train some more.  Don’t be fooled into believing that putting your employees through an introductory training program is going to equate to 5-Star (or even 1-Star) customer service. Get out from behind the grill (or desk) and show ’em how it’s done.

The chasm between young employees and the companies they work for is as wide as it’s ever been—and growing wider each day. But that is of little comfort to my clients, each working desperately to attract and retain the best and the brightest and avoid being Kenyonized at all costs.
You don’t want an explanation, you need answers. You want to know how to recruit qualified and competent young employees to your business, and you want to know what you can do to keep them on your payroll.  Moreover, you want to know how to get your emerging workforce to bring their very best to the job reflecting the same effort, passion and energy that they routinely bring to their recreational and social pursuits.  To borrow a popular catchphrase from the world of tournament poker--you want to know how to get them to go All In at work.

I am writing the book with the answers and the solutions to employee disengagement and turnover.  After all, we are all pretty much in agreement that “Generation Y is Different from Boomers and Gen Xers.” That’s why my new book All In – How America's Best Companies are Getting Young Employees to Work Harder and Stay Longer will be the first book to take the discussion beyond theory and rhetoric and shine the spotlight on what works.

As you read about Kenyon, you were thinking “That kind of thing wouldn’t happen in my organization because…”  However you complete that sentence, and regardless of what kind of business you’re in, I’d like to tell your story in my new book, All In.

Click here and let’s shine the spotlight on you and/or your organization as we reveal how to get young employees to work harder and stay longer.

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