A customer interview. Coffee Molly Cafés

Greetings to our subscribers and everyone who stumbled upon the Shifton company page by chance. Today we present an interview with one of our customers - the owner of a cafe chain, who has been using the Shifton online service for quite some time.

Shifton: Hello. Let's introduce ourselves!

Irina: Hello! My name is Irina Uskova, I own and manage a chain of coffee shops, Coffee Molly, in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia).

Shifton: Tell us a bit more about your business.

Irina: By the start of 2021, the company had over 20 bartenders with varying levels of duty. Coffee Molly has been operating in the city since 2014, developing the concept of coffee shops for office workers. Today, there are seven coffee shops in Nizhny Novgorod with a total turnover of 25 million roubles per year.

Shifton: Why did you opt to partner with Shifton?

Irina: The market specificity is such that our employees are quite young people, and therefore they often change jobs. For most of them, it's their first job. As such, working with personnel takes a lot of time and includes the selection of applicants, training, mentoring, and professional development.

It has long been clear to me that this process should be taken lightly, as the main point is to preserve the main «backbone» of bartenders - 5-6 people. They help newcomers to adapt quickly and easily.

All this vibrant activity affects the work schedule daily, so it should be promptly monitored, and in case of changes, everyone must be notified immediately.

Shifton: How did you handle these issues before?

Irina: Previously, we sent updates in a general chat, sometimes we had to call employees personally to make sure they were aware of the changes. But the more coffee shops we opened, the more we needed to automate the whole routine.

Shifton: Does your company require an automated online scheduling service?

Irina: Of course, those who keep up with trends are aware that the food services market is adopting IT technologies more and more. Working on schedules is a daily routine for the administrator and senior baristas. As part of scheduling, they must consider employees' preferences (personal matters, second job, etc.), the efficiency of the bartender at a particular coffee shop, and the specifics of the day (weekend or weekday). In addition, we need to organise training for newcomers, conduct an inventory or general cleaning, find a replacement for the unwell, or divide the shift between two employees. And of course, we should consider all possible delays and overtime.

We automated this process a long time ago, but as the company continued to grow, I wanted something more than just a programme that would set work schedules. I was looking for partner developers who could make it so that the programme could also work as a payroll for each employee. There were even more ideas...

Shifton: Did your expectations come to fruition as the cooperation with Shifton expanded?

Irina: Yes, I totally feel positive about it! Frankly speaking, when I accidentally found Shifton, it took me some time to notice how flexible this product can be.

During the testing stage, I asked many questions about what else is planned to be implemented and what functions Shifton offers so that employees would be confident in their work schedule at any time and know in advance the amount they will receive at the end of each month. I wanted the payroll to be executed without delays, in real-time mode and accessible to a person on their smartphone at any given moment, not just on payday.

Shifton: Did you manage to fulfil your requests? How satisfied are you with the support from Shifton developers?

Irina: All my requests were fulfilled, and I also realised that the programme could be modernised further according to our needs. I communicated closely with the developers for 6 months and told them what we liked and what else we expect to see. We implemented the programme quickly and immediately realised that we wanted to use it more and more and customise it for our needs.

Shifton: Have you succeeded so far?

Irina: We have managed to achieve the following: we automated the schedule for each employee, taking into account their preferences, assigned bartenders to branches, and adjusted the calculation of bonuses and fines. We also eliminated errors in salary calculations when some shifts were not taken into account or were paid for twice. We installed the application on all employees' smartphones, where they instantly receive notifications on updates and payroll. We also reduced the time spent on scheduling tenfold and reduced turnover, as employees see their shifts/salary and can influence them, thus improving the time planning process for all employees overall.

Shifton: Surely you have more suggestions for customising the Shifton tool?

Irina: Yes, of course. We are awaiting a more user-friendly interface for making changes in the schedules. At present, not all details can be changed, and to adjust certain parameters, you have to create everything anew. We are waiting for more flexible settings in salary reports for general periods and the option to leave comments on work. Regarding service functions, we need the option for employees to leave comments and compile reports on the accomplished tasks in the application. I'm also interested in the automatic calculation of bonuses depending on sales indicators or KPI fulfillment and more flexible settings of the application interface for the convenience of employees: what to display on the main screen, what notifications to send, and what to report on.

Shifton: Thank you for your detailed and informative feedback, Irina. Can you recommend the Shifton online service to owners of other companies?

Irina: I already recommend the tool to my customers, whom I assist in launching their coffee shops, as Shifton helps to save money, it's easy to use and my employees like it. Before starting to use Shifton, I thoroughly tested more than 10 different applications and programmes. By the time I found Shifton, I'd already agreed with a developer who was ready to create a similar programme for us. And Shifton completely resolved all my issues with scheduling and payroll automation.