The challenge

The Wrisinger-King Franchise Group operates 49 SONIC® Drive-Ins across Kansas and surrounding states. As with many quick service restaurant businesses, the group employs a young part-time workforce that’s always on-the-go. Because of this, managers previously struggled to keep their ever-changing frontline teams informed and on top of schedules through ad hoc in person reminders or phone calls.

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Employees typically visited or called their store each weekend to find out their assigned shifts for the coming week. This created unnecessary distractions for the people who were working at the time, and left managers in the dark about which employees had actually reviewed the schedule. These managers ended up spending 2-3 hours each day just calling various employees to find replacement coverage for people who couldn’t work their shifts. A few years ago, Wrisinger-King’s leaders decided to address this problem by rolling out Crew’s mobile team communications and scheduling solution across their stores.

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The solution

Now, the group’s general managers and area supervisors can log into Crew to recognize high-performing team members, post task reminders, announce store closures, share schedules, request shift covers or simply get in touch with any employee via a quick message. For instance, Bruce Higgins, a Wrisinger-King general manager, shared, “I use Crew to talk to everybody at SONIC, and it works even better than texting or calling their phones. With Crew, I can see who's been checking the schedule, following our pictures or reading my comments about what needs to get done on their shift, so I know when my messages are received.”

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All of Wrisinger-King’s managers use Crew to post weekly schedules and manage shift coverage requests. They appreciate that updates are captured in one place for everyone to see, which reduces missed shifts because employees are empowered – and expected – to take accountability for their schedules. Team members use the Crew mobile app to share their availability with managers and, when needed, ask if their peers can pick up a particular shift.

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“We’ve really benefited from bringing Crew into our business. It cuts down manager’s time spent on tedious tasks, and makes employees happy because they have a work tool on their cell phones that’s just as effortless as their favorite social media apps.”

Kendra Lauden, Supervisor,
Wrisinger-King Franchise Group

 

Additionally, managers keep people motivated by publicly awarding a Crew Gold Star whenever an employee does a good job or receives positive feedback from a mystery shopper. And they can easily engage with all of their team members through Crew, even when they’re not physically in the restaurant. This comes in handy, especially when someone needs to get an important announcement out quickly. During a recent winter weather event, Bruce remembers, “In order to notify my staff that the restaurant was closing, I just went right to my phone and could instantly see on Crew who was working that shift. I was able to quickly message all five people at once and make sure they didn’t head to work in unsafe conditions.”

The results

With Crew in place to facilitate effortless team communications, managers at Wrisinger-King are focusing more on the business. By streamlining the time-consuming task of getting shift coverage, the group’s 27 store managers together are freeing around 3,000 hours every month that they can now devote to ensuring the best possible customer experience.

 

By keeping employees informed about their jobs and their manager’s expectations, Crew ultimately helps them provide better service. Since the group’s millennial workers already have their phones on them at all times, they love that Crew provides an easy-to-understand networking tool that simplifies their work lives. Finally, when it comes to attracting fresh talent to keep restaurants optimally staffed, Crew lets Wrisinger-King supervisors easily send hiring announcements out to all employees and request referrals to friends or family.