Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2012 | Page 37

By Jack Mackey

Responding to Feedback
Eliminate root causes to improve key performance scores

G

ood or bad, customer feed- underperforming in this critical area (they
back is a gift. So much so were dead last in SMG’s Benchmark Dathat almost every franchise tabase for fast-casual concepts) they knew
system asks customers to they had to take action. But before they
comment on their experiences, and even could fix the problem, they had to know
what was causing the sluggish service.
to rate them.
2) Action. To find the source of the
There are predictable reasons customers want to give you feedback. Some will slowness, we conducted a text analysis
have bad experiences. You can bet on it. on the open-ended responses to their
And they’ll want to tell you—and then customer satisfaction survey. With more
expect you to do something about it. But than 2,000 customer comments just about
only a few franchise systems are really speed of service, we were able to identify
good at anticipating and responding to four different subcategories: receiving the
this challenge.
order, placing the order, payment, and
What I mean is that a lot of fran- delivery. We also analyzed the sentiment
chise companies will respond
Change in Top Box Scores
(New Process minus Current Process)
to complaints, but only in a
very tactical way. They install Time to Receive Order +15%
systems to alert them when
customers complain. ManagOverall Satisfaction +10%
ers are then held accountable
Recommend +6%
to call the unhappy customers
and “solve the problem.”
Return +3%
Of course, this kind of oneoff, after-the-fact approach to
Taste +1%
problem-solving is not nearly
as effective as identifying the root causes of each comment and categorized them
of recurring problems. The best-managed into three types of customer feelings
companies systematically eliminate the about their experience: positive, neutral,
root causes of problems that they learn and negative.
about through customer complaints.
In the eyes of customers, the most
Here’s an example from a regional sand- negative aspect of speed was the time it
wich chain that started with a big problem took to pay. Among the many comments
around the issue of slow service. But the about speed of service, 3 in 10 (28 percent)
story ends with happier customers and customers responded with some type of
increased revenue. All from analyzing negative comment about the speed of the
their customer feedback to create their payment process. Here are a few actual
“get-well” plan, not just with apologies, comments: “It takes too long to pay for my
but by eliminating the root causes of meal.”; “I was done with my chips before I
customer dissatisfaction—and defection. even paid!”; and “Why do I need to pay after
1) Situation. For most fast-casual I get my sandwich?”
restaurants, speed of service is a critical
When customers mentioned issues
part of business and a key driver in cre- with the speed of payment, their Likeliating satisfied customers. So when this hood to Return scores were 15 percentmedium-sized chain discovered they were age points lower than when customers

didn’t mention speed of payment. This
was significantly worse than scores when
customers mentioned other problems
with speed. These findings indicated
that improving or changing the payment
process would eliminate one of the root
causes of customer defections.
3) Results. So the company tested a
new process in just a handful of locations.
Instead of customers ordering and paying after receiving their meal, customers would now order, pay, then receive
their meal. This really wasn’t very hard
to change.
Restaurants that implemented the new
payment process quickly saw higher scores
in Speed of Service, Overall Satisfaction,
Likelihood to Return, and Likelihood to
Recommend—without seeing a decrease
in Taste of Food, another key driver for
this franchise.
But it’s not just about increasing
scores, it’s also about profits. By making this change to the payment process,
franchisees now are able to serve customers more quickly, going from four
minutes per order to less
than one minute per order.
As a result, restaurants using
the new system have seen a 3
percent increase in sales from
one quarter to the next. To
top it off, the franchise has
improved in SMG’s Benchmark Database, going from
last in Speed of Service to fifth.
At this regional company,
they anticipate receiving customer comments, including complaints. They systematically aggregate those comments.
Then they use text analysis to identify
the root cause of any problem that ruins
the customer experience. They try new
ways of doing things until they can prove,
with real customer data, that they have
fixed the problem permanently—and
system-wide.
Is that what you’re doing? n

Grow Market Lead

Connecting
with
customers

Jack Mackey is vice president and chief
evangelist for SMG, a worldwide customer
experience management firm that improves
performance for multi-unit companies. You
can request a complimentary copy of Five
Things We Learned from Talking to 500
Million People at www.smg.com/research.

Franchiseupdate I ssue I I , 2012 

35