How one app connected Circle K's front-line staff
Communicating clearly and effectively with staff is an ongoing challenge for any organization, large or small. But how do you tackle that challenge with tens of thousands of front-line employees, especially when some of them don’t have company email addresses?
If you’re chain store and gas station operator Circle K, you engage Montreal-based company WorkJam to create a mobile app that not only communicates with and engages front-line staff, but also helps to improve the customer experience.
“It’s gone extremely well for us … It’s been a rigorous journey, but we are leveraging communications where even our CEO will post messages and it gets to the frontline,” said Jennifer Karras, director of operations excellence – North America, Circle K, during a presentation at NRF ’25 Retail’s Big Show in New York City earlier this week.
“We also use it for tasks, so it’s really a one-stop-shop for our store managers and our store personnel so they see the work is actually being done and this helps us get our stores ready on a day-to-day basis for our customers,” said Karras.
Here’s how it works: Each day, specific tasks for each store are listed within the app so employees know what, specifically, needs to get done during their shift. Once those tasks are completed, a report is sent to the district manager as well as operations personnel, explained Karras.
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For completing their tasks, store managers and district managers can award front-line staff with digital badges that can be shared and celebrated within the app. (Data from the app is reported to the company’s c-suite, said Karras.)
Also, when piloting projects or testing new supplies such as cleaning agents or toilet paper, for example, Circle K will use the app to conduct employee surveys around these efforts. “Giving the employee that voice has such tremendous impact on the organization,” added WorkJam co-founder and CEO Steve Kramer.
The app is also used to gauge customer satisfaction. Once a customer has purchased an item in store, they are promoted to scan a QR code to complete a survey. The results of that survey are analyzed by artificial intelligence in real time and turned into an actionable insight within the WorkJam app.
For example, if a customer complains the coffee station is messy, a task will be generated within the app and the front-line staff will receive a prompt to clean that area. Or, if a customer is leaving a positive review, the employee will be recognized within the app for their exemplary customer service.
“What we’re seeing is we’re getting much more recognition than dissatisfaction, which has been an eye-opener for us,” said Karras. “We thought we’d get more customer complaints, but our customers are taking the time to log the [positive] experience they’ve had.”
To date, Circle K has more than 51,000 employees in North America signed up to the app and 71,000 staff across eight European countries, in eight different languages.
