"I don't know what it was like back when you were starting out at Chick-fil-A as far as the customer experience. What was it like then when you were starting versus what you helped build over many decades? I'd love to say that this is a complicated process that literally no one else could duplicate, but unfortunately that would not be true. Honestly, when I look back, I think one of the things that we learned really early on was that there is power in consistency. I think we consistently remark about the consistent, and what I mean by that is it's fascinating to me when you have a great experience time after time after time, and let me just recap. If you have a good experience consistently, people begin to consistently remark.

It's like every time I go to that dry cleaner, man, they're just super nice, or every time I go to Chick-fil-A, they just greet me with a warm-hearted greeting and a smile, and man, they make eye contact, and they say 'my pleasure', and when that happens time after time after time, you begin to remark about it, and you begin to visit those places a little bit more frequently, and so what I learned very early on, and I think what attracted me to the brand was there was power in consistency. You know, when you walk into any environment and somebody makes eye contact, and they smile, and they speak enthusiastically, and they stay connected-those four things, done well over time, make you want to remark about it, make you want to come back and visit, and 

like I said, I'd love to say it's something that hardly anybody else could do, but it's the reality is, I think what has made us or set us apart at least a little bit is our ability to consistently do those things over time, and so we spend a lot of time with team members teaching them those things, and then how to do those things consistently over time. So, what were those things that you worked on in your role as VP of customer experience where you went, 'Okay, we're world-class.' But how do we make this consistent across the board? How do we improve on the things we've already built? What are those little things or big things that you worked on?

Well, I think, you know, first, we did have this mantra and continue to have this mantra about what does it take to create a raving fan in any business, and for us, raving fans really do three things. They come more often. They happily participate. They pay full price, and they tell others about their experience, and so we look for things that would create those dynamics, that they would want to come more often. They would happily pay full price. Their value is there, and they feel that value, and then they would want to share that with other people, and so when we talk about those little things, we try to make the transaction frictionless. And what I mean by that is where you come in, and because of the process and the drive-through or whether that's on the Chick-fil-A One app or that's taking a catering order or that's ordering from the register at the front counter, trying to make those things frictionless.

Let me give you an example of something we learned pretty early on. Well, it took us a while, but you know, when we got probably in the early 2000s, we started getting really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really busy. Word of mouth was out there. People were coming more often, and on a Saturday, you may have been in a Chick-fil-A where the dining room was so packed it became, I think it was John Acuff that coined the phrase, we were the grace-filled mosh pit. It was like full of grace, but it was a mosh pit of people, and what we realized is this doesn't feel frictionless. Matter of fact, you walk into that; you're looking; you're a little nervous. You don't know, am I in front of somebody or not?

So we had to come up, and we spent a tremendous amount of time on queuing. Like, what does a queuing line look like for one of our customers, where when they walk in, they can now look down at their phone. They're not worried about it. They walk in. They have a frictionless experience. Another example of that would be when they ordered, instead of having to stand in that mosh pit and wait on their food, we started. We created what we call a table marker. That's not new to the industry, but it was a way for us to identify, and this was unique, by not using a number system. We didn't want somebody to feel like they were a number, so we used their name, and we used descriptors, and by doing that, we were able to allow them to go out, sit in the dining room, check their phone, have a drink, and then we would meet them at the table with their food, and it was all around this idea of creating a frictionless experience. So, those would be a couple examples."

- Shane Benson / Senior VP of Operations / Chick-fil-A

- George Kamel / Ramsey Personality.