How QSR Brands Can Create Incredible Customer Experiences Using Data

6 mins

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Pallavi Pavithran

October 24, 2022

In the last few years, the world has become well used to online food ordering, takeaways, and drive-thru. Hence, many new QSRs (Quick Service Restaurants) are rising, and established brands are spreading widely even in remote areas. The global QSR Market reached $ 232.3 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow to $ 308 billion by 2027. This data proves there are countless opportunities in this industry.

In search of what makes global customers choose a QSR, what makes them satisfied with them, what makes them leave a brand forever, and how data-driven customer experience works in the industry, we invited 2 QSR industry experts on our 6th episode of the talk show CX See Why!

Deborah Philips, Group Manager, Innovation Strategy, and Mike Haracz, Corporate Chef - Culinary Development Lead at Univar Solutions, joined us with our host, the customer experience expert Dan Gingiss - The Experience Maker™. Even though both of our guests are in the QSR industry and are seasoned experts with years of experience, all the insights and points discussed in the show apply to any industry.

The insightful discussion revolved around the following points:

Connecting customer data to make better CX decisions.
Using data and customer insights to address critical challenges.
Identifying the key trends and patterns in real-time using data.

Customer Review Analysis of Top 19 QSR Brands

All points discussed in the show were analyzed with 127,990 customer reviews of 19 leading QSR brands in the USA collected by Clootrack from multiple sources like Play Store, Google Maps, and App Store from July 2021 - July 2022. As we can see from the graph, McDonald’s is way ahead of other giants like Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Subway in terms of customer review volume.

Gender-Wise Customer Reviews

According to the 128K reviews analyzed, there are more reviews by male customers than female customers. There is a difference of more than 22% in the gender distribution!

Top Delighting Driver in the QSR - What Makes Customers Love a QSR Brand?

Dan Gingiss came up with a quiz to guess the top delighting customer experience driver in the QSR industry for Deborah and Mike. The top 6 delighters are as follows in the below image. But what could be the topmost factor that makes customers like a Quick Service Restaurant?

Deborah said if a customer leaves a positive review about a QSR restaurant, it could be due to the Staff Behavior and the Experience they had with the brand. But, the no.1 reason a customer loves or likes to go to a QSR restaurant is ‘Convenience.’

Chef Mike also said Experience would probably be the no.1 reason a customer loves a QSR brand. But, again, the real reason would be the ‘Convenience’ itself!

Convenience is the Top Delighter for a QSR Customer!

Food Quality comes only after convenience. So, both convenience and quality of food enhance the customer experience of QSRs more than any other drivers. Dan also added his experience of an interview with a chef who is also an entrepreneur. He asked the chef, ‘what is the most important factor for a successful restaurant business - Quality of Food or Quality of Experience?’ A chef and, moreover, an entrepreneur in him said it’s 50-50. Both are required for a successful restaurant!

When they checked the gender distribution, there was no significant difference in the top 4 delighters. Women like to explore more food varieties and are more delighted with that than men. And men feel more delighted with staff behavior than women in their experience with QSRs.

Chef Mike believes most of the time, customers do not want the tastiest food. Still, instead, they expect consistency in the quality, speed of delivery, and price ranges. Especially in the busiest country like the USA, people want everything ASAP, and convenience is always the top priority. He also mentioned an example of one of the top QSR brands and said people do not go for the brand not because they offer the tastiest burger in the town, but the consistency in the taste, overall experience, speed, and the price they keep makes them choose the brand over and over. For Mike, the convenience makes a lot of sense.

For Deborah, convenience has a lot of components. And it is different for different people in different moments of their lives! For instance, if you have kids in your backseat, you don’t want to walk to the restaurant, and if you are on your way to work, parking space and grabbing the food order quickly is ‘convenience’.

Chef Mike added to Deborah’s point that it also depends on the people’s choice at the moment. If a customer wants a coffee with 3 creams, 2 sugar, and 3 pumps of this and that, the convenience of getting that order accurately as they want is also essential. Hence, personalized experience also comes under convenience.

Deborah said when it comes to emerging new QSR brands, the food quality can be a game-changer. If they serve good quality food and different varieties, people will come to try them and show interest in trying different varieties. And she added speed, convenience, and food quality are essential in the customer experience in this industry.

Dan said that if your food quality is good and the service is terrible, people probably won’t return. And, if your food is awful and service is good, people either won’t return. So, brands must put effort into their food quality and other essential aspects to enhance the overall customer experience.

What Customers Say About A Positive Experience with QSRs?

“super user friendly, stores all your previous order information and makes it simple as can be for those who are bored, hardly want to eat something new, like myself, to just reorder what they usually get.”

“Love love the mobile order curbside it is the best and most convenient thing ever when ordering which is just as awesome with all the deals and rewards best invention so far especially with impatient little ones!”

“ease of access all the options, customizations and deals are at your fingertips :) instead of going through an annoying process with a disrespectful employee otp.”

When you check the 2nd and 3rd verbatim, it is evident that app performance also plays a vital role in convenience!

Guessing the Top 2 Concerns in Customer Experience

Understanding what makes a customer dislike a QSR is also essential. Here, we’ve considered the top 6 concerns of QSR customers, and Dan asked Deborah and Mike to guess the top 2 areas of concern.

This seemed a bit tricky to Mike. He said Waiting Time would be one of the reasons for negative customer experience since people choose a ‘Quick’ Service Restaurant and set an expectation of how fast it should be. If there is a long waiting time, they will be enraged, leading to a negative experience. Also, Waiting time is the opposite of Convenience, Dan added. Another concern pointed out by Mike was the Ordering Experience.

Then it was Deborah’s turn. She agreed that Waiting Time is one of the main concerns of customers. And, Missing of Order would also make customers write a negative review. Based on the last 6 months of her experience, she thinks Price would also be a problem due to inflation. She has chosen Price and Missing Orders as the top 2 concerns.

Ordering Experience and App Issues are the top 2 concerns of QSR customers based on 128K customer reviews.

When we dig deeper into the top concerns, orders getting canceled and not being able to finish the order are the main concerns with the Ordering Experience. The app keeps crashing, slow loading, glitches, and other issues with the app are the complaints raised by customers around App Experience.

Deborah says customer expectations are constantly shifting. Years ago, ordering food from our phones was not even an option. Yet, we created this convenience in this new way. It became a part of behavior and routine and part of our day, and when it gets wrong, we get very frustrated. For example, people say “it was my lunch break time, and I don't have food.” They will no longer feel Convenience if they can't place an order due to technical issues.

Dan asked chef Mike's opinion about this from a food perspective with an example of people's ordering preferences. Like, some want combinations in food, some want an extra pickle, and some don't like the pickle. He asked what the chef thinks about their ordering experiences and what annoys them.

Mike said this is a recent issue where technology is failing. It reminded him of a story that somebody is onboarding an airplane, not knowing that there is wifi on it, then he knows and says, fantastic, we've got wifi. But when the wifi is down, they will complain about things they don't know or didn't know existed.

The QSRs try to make the ordering process easier, allow customization of the orders, and go through many simplifications by reducing menu items, this leads consumers to think that they have so many choices. However, operationally, it is much easier for QSRs to have a limited menu and cross utilizing the resources.

What Customers Say About The negative customer experience in the QSR industry?

"I cannot make any orders at all using the mobile ordering as the "add to cart" button seems to have permanently been replaced by a "check availability" button instead, and still also needs an expanded and edited drink menu to include ice options, and chocolate milk in the breakfast menu."

"doesn't work. can never place an order as it always kicks me back at the payment screen with an error message of default. coupons never apply. always have to go to the store to buy."

"how is it possible that in such a small order there are 4 missing products a third of the order this is a robbery if every customer who stops by the drive true is missing one thing from his order"

All customer complaints and negative reviews are very valuable. Because they put it by expecting that the brand will fix its issues, if the brand doesn't solve its customers' problems, customers will move to their rivals.

Deborah agreed with Dan and said, in the olden days, if customers had any issue, they would go to the store and talk to the employees; now, when it switched to digital, they had to raise their hands by writing an online review.

The 4 Ds of QSR Growth

There are 4 aspects where the QSR industry needs to focus on to enhance the customer experience. Let's dig them deep.

Digital Ordering

Analyzing the trend over the year, it is found that Mobile App Order is the leading factor consistently in digital food ordering. And it keeps growing. There is no doubt that the pandemic accelerated it, and it’s interesting to find that over the 1,28k reviews, 59% of customers put reviews mentioning mobile app order experience.

This insight is interesting and surprising to Deborah. Because Deborah doesn’t think mobile app order is the primary delighter. If almost 60% of people mentioned mobile app orders in their reviews, we need to connect it with the previous concern we discussed: App Issues. This indicates more customers are likely frustrated with the mobile app order experience.

Chef Mike added that, when we take the reviews available online, most of the customers ordered the food online and are probably technically skilled. And, when they face an issue while placing an order, they also tend to leave a review mentioning the mobile app order specifically.

Drive Thru

Here, we analyzed the reviews of customers who mentioned their eating mode.

Drive-thru has become the inevitable mode of eating in the QSR industry. 89% said they go for the drive-thru, and very few people opt for dine-in, store pickup, and carry-out options.

Notably, there has been a 26% increase in the customer review volume around the drive-thru option in 6 months.

Digital Payments

When checking which available payment method customers prefer more, it was not very surprising to Dan as Apple Pay comes on top.

But, Paypal surprised Dan that he didn’t even think people would use Paypal for paying QSRs. Google Pay and Samsung Pay come in the 3rd and 4th positions, respectively.

Dan said the payment method also plays a part in the customer experience puzzle. Because if we go to a store, we prefer to pay with the most comfortable payment method, especially when it comes to digital payments. It will be frustrating if the store doesn’t accept our preferred payment method. Hence, the availability of payment methods plays a significant role.

Delivery

Insights on ‘delivery’ are not much surprising in the last couple of years. DoorDash is the foremost leader in delivery facilitation companies.

Reviews around Grubhub, Postmates, and in-house apps like Domino's and Pizza Hut doubled by July 2022 compared to February 2022. Since it's Quick Service Restaurants, delivery plays an inevitable role in the experience. People want the order delivered intact, exactly as they ordered, and as fast as possible.

The Most Popular QSR Segments

It is essential to pull in what customers ordered when they left a positive or negative review.

This insight surprised Dan that he hadn't thought Pizza was this popular! 58% of reviews were around Pizza. No wonder America has a National Pizza Day on February 9th! The Pizza obsession is significantly growing, and a 47% growth in customer reviews around it over 1 year can be seen.

Chef Mike had more to say about this. Chef says “Pizza has been the 'delivery food' for quite a while now. 30 minutes over, it's free! A lot of R&D and development on the packaging and food are going through to make the product more deliverable over the years with the rise of Uber Eats, DoorDash, etc. Many established brands are researching how to deliver their food better because they are not very developed for that mechanic. Because once we make food, after 15 minutes, it will become not so great.

So there should be technology in packaging. For example, Wendy's changed their french fries to be crispier and stay longer. That's the way through the delivery process. Because if the customers are eating the food 20 minutes after it is made, they still have to make the experience better.

The Pizza is pretty good, even at room temperature. Things like burgers and french fries will be stale and not give the same experience. So the insights kind of make sense based on the history of our food delivery.”

When Do QSR Customers Eat Pizza, Burgers, Sandwiches, and Noodles?

As per the timestamp of collected reviews, people eat Burger during mid-morning and lunch hours, while Pizza consumption is higher in the evening. So people prefer Pizza during the evening snack time and dinner time.

Sandwich is mainly consumed as a lunch, while Noodles are considered as lunch, dinner, or evening food.

For chef Mike, the timing of the sandwich makes sense. He said when they need something quick; consumers assume that a sandwich will take a minute or less to get. They don’t have to wait for a long time for Pizza and sometimes like burgers. With Noodles also, there are ways to prepare quickly. So, that can mostly be a lunch or dinner, he added.

Also, Deborah pointed out an interesting fact; Noodles are less embarrassing to eat in front of other people who are not eating, especially when you are at your office or in a video meeting. It is far better than putting a large burger into the mouth. So, that can also be a reason people choose Noodles as a quick lunch!

Noticeable Customer Experience Trends and Patterns in the QSR

There is a 43% increase in customer reviews and demands around promotions and deals in the 6 months. People are looking for deals like group meals and 2-for-1 options frequently.

Deborah said about the promotion and deals trend as it can be seen in multiple channels, especially delivery channels like Uber Eats and DoorDash. This trend is trying to get customers into a new behavior and trying to make that behavior repeatable. Also, there is a part of marketing and the changing economy influencing customers’ behavior with deals and promotions.

Also, there is a rapidly emerging trend in healthier fast food. Compared to other types of fast food like gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian, there has been a surge of 600% more customer reviews around healthy eating since January 2022.

Chef Mark says it depends on the individual and what they define as ‘healthy.’ Based on marketing and healthy halo, some kind of evaluation from customers can happen. People might think they are eating ‘healthy’ but often they are ‘not.’ For example, some people avoid butter and replace it with olive oil as a healthier option. But again, it may not be the healthier option for another person. That is why, healthy eating depends upon the person.

Key Takeaways for All Brands

1. Capitalize on Digital Technology Options

Even though QSR is not a technology-based industry, the technology significantly impacts the customer experience in this industry. As we discussed, digital ordering, delivery, and payments can play a vital role in the customer experience. Hence capture the opportunities to engage customers in a highly personalized way as they expect with the latest technologies.

2. Identify the Key Trends

Understand emerging customer requirements and preferences by tracking customer trends. Here, in the QSR industry, we have seen that consumers want the product/service fast, easy, and convenient. So, incorporate agility to get a competitive edge and delight consumers, as these are their top priorities.

3. Use Data to Get the Full Picture

Use data about the things surrounding the experience to get the overall picture of what causes people to have good and bad experiences. So, create personalized experiences based on the insights of busy hours, requirements of deals/promotions, and type of food they want.

For more interviews with CX leaders, check out the episodes of The CX See Why episodes here.