BrainTrust Query: When You Think Fast Food Retailer, Do You Think 'Customer Centric'?
We are in the age of the customer, when understanding what your loyal customers need is paramount to long-term loyalty and financial growth. But how do you know where to start? Where do you focus, considering that the customer is now exceptionally savvy, seeks product knowledge across multiple channels, and comes with higher expectations than ever?
For food service retailers, this is an even tougher battle to tackle. In an industry that sees high levels of employee turnover, it can be difficult to create a workforce that is customer-focused without constant employee training. Additionally, the franchise model complicates the ability to provide a consistent experience across all outlets. Finally, customer behavior is constantly changing. It is critical for food service retailers to have the flexibility to adjust their processes to meet changing needs — and to be able to translate those changes to the customer.
Almost every company wants to reach their customers, and most claim to focus on customers in the decisions they make. But are they strategically aligning who they want to be as an organization with what their customers need? And even more important, are customers taking note?
The dunnhumby Customer Centricity Index (CCI) is a comprehensive research study that measures how customers feel retailers are meeting their needs. Scoring retailers on each of our "Seven Pillars of Customer Centricity" illustrates how customers perceive their total customer experience — from their assortment of products, to how feedback is applied to operations, to how customers feel about the pricing on the items that they purchase most often.
In dunnhumby's first CCI report, focusing on food service retail, fast food retailers scored significantly lower across most of the Seven Pillars and on their overall customer centricity scores than fast casual and casual dining. In fact, dunnhumby found that there was little differentiation in the CCI scores among fast food retailers, indicating that there is currently high switching and low loyalty within the fast food sector. With the scale and reach of fast food retailers like McDonald's and others, there could be a huge opportunity to drive loyalty and define what this space could look like for fast food retailers.