Tag Archives: Fast Food

Who is to Blame for Poor Customer Service?

Who is to Blame for Poor Customer Service?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

The short version of the story is this. At about 9:15 p.m., I pulled into one of my favorite fast-food restaurants. There was one customer ahead of me in the drive-through lane. I assumed he was placing an order. After several minutes, I realized something else was going on. I wasn’t sure what, but the amount of time he spent talking to the person on the other end of the intercom took much longer than it should have. Eventually, he pulled around to get his food. It was now my turn.

I waited for the person to welcome me and ask what I wanted. It never happened. I then pulled around to the drive-through window. The employee inside ignored me. I tapped on the window and she came over and said the restaurant was closed. I asked what time they closed, and she said 11. I mentioned that it was not even 9:30. She shrugged and said, “I’m the only one here, and I’ve decided to close the restaurant.”

A few days later, I was with a high-level executive from a major restaurant chain and told her the story. She said, “It wasn’t the employee’s fault. It was her manager’s fault.”

Poor Customer Experience Cartoon Shep Hyken

The explanation was simple. The manager should never have allowed one employee to run a restaurant that takes a team of people. One, it’s impossible to do everything: taking orders, cooking the food, keeping the restaurant clean and much more. Second, it’s just not safe to have one employee in the store, let alone late in the evening.

At some point, you must trust your employees to do a good job. Yet if they don’t, who is to blame? The employee at the fast-food restaurant was put into a situation and given responsibility beyond her capabilities. Whoever is in charge of hiring must hire the right people who are capable – or have the potential – of handling the job. Whoever is in charge of training must give the employee the skills needed to do the job. Whoever oversees scheduling must make sure the restaurant is appropriately staffed.

Of course, there is more than just hiring, training and staffing, but the point is to not be so quick to blame the employee for a bad customer experience. Assuming the employee is capable, failure is often due to something or someone else.

The story I shared illustrates how failure in customer service is often not the fault of the individual but the system in place. All things considered, the responsibility for customer service success or failure usually lies in the hands of leadership, not the front-line workers.

Image Credits: Shep Hyken, Pexels

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Starbucks Upgrading the Last Minute of the Mobile Ordering Journey

Starbucks Upgrading the Last Minute of the Mobile Ordering Journey

Starbucks is definitely regarded as an innovator in the mobile commerce and loyalty space.

Starbucks was one of the first retailers (2008) to successfully introduce a card-based loyalty program with broad adoption – the Starbucks card – which not only had loyalty benefits for customers but also could be used as a means of payment.

Building from this, Starbucks created a mobile app early in the smartphone era that mirrored many of the capabilities of the Starbucks card, allowing people to not only pay with their mobile phone (backed by a credit card), but to check their points and payment balances.

Starbucks then launched mobile order & pay in Portland near the end of 2014 before beginning to release it more broadly in 2015.

All of Starbucks’ loyalty and mobile technology inventions positioned the company quite well to survive the COVID-19 shutdowns around the world.

Starbucks Mobile Ordering

Personally I try to keep as many apps OFF my phone as possible. So, it wasn’t until the coronavirus restrictions that I finally caved in and downloaded the Starbucks app. The reason?

Given the pandemic, the last thing I wanted to do was stand around in an enclosed space with suspect ventilation waiting for my Starbucks beverage any longer than I had do. So, I downloaded the app and began ordering my drink from the car and waiting 4-5 minutes (or longer if they looked busy) before going inside to get my drink.

What I found annoying though was that the app gave an estimate that often was in the 15-23 minute range, despite the fact that it rarely took more than five minutes, and there was no notification when my drink was ready.

I started designing a better approach in my mind, and was about to suggest it to Starbucks when I happened upon what is likely a pilot in one of my local Starbucks. It looks like this:

Starbucks Mobile Order Board

At this particular pilot Starbucks they have this flat screen that shows the people who have mobile orders placed (in alphabetical order) and then the Starbucks employee at the end of the line has a tablet they manage.

When an order is complete, the Starbucks employee updates the order status to ‘READY’ on the tablet, the image on the board changes to show a READY indicator, and a text message is sent to the person’s phone.

When the customer picks up their order, then the Starbucks employee marks it ‘PICKED UP’ on the tablet so that the person’s name is removed from the board.

This is very close to the idea that I was going to propose, but with one big exception.

My idea was to suggest printing out an enhanced bar code that could be scanned at the end of the line by the barista to trigger the text message – instead of using a tablet and a screen. This could have been a much simpler and cheaper approach both in terms of technology and labor.

Either way, there is no doubt that Starbucks continues to experiment and push for improvements in the last minute of the mobile ordering journey to create a great experience. This enables them to keep their employees and customers healthy and safe, and keep Starbucks ahead of their competition.

Keep innovating!

Image (2) credit: Digitaltrends.com


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Value Access Example – Domino’s Steady Pizza

Helping People Extract the Value You’ve Worked So Hard to Create

I came across this great video from Domino’s Pizza Brazil that shows their new Steady Pizza concept.

It’s a perfect example of the Value Access component of my Value Framework for Innovation, and how Value Access can help you better deliver the value you’ve created for customers (literally).

The concept of the video starts with a simple question:

How do we help to reduce the chances of a delivery fail?

I love this.

The result of the concept is a piece of delivery equipment that not only helps to reduce the chances of a delivery fail, but also serves as a great marketing gimmick.

Too many people after working so hard in the Value Creation step of innovation (which in large part is invention), just stop there and think they’re done. Don’t!

So ask yourself:

Value Access — What can we do to help people access this value?

Value Translation — And even more important, you must keep in mind how you are going to translate that value for people, to help them understand how this new solution will fit into their lives AND is better than their existing solution and worth the trouble of replacing it.

Always remember:

Innovation = Value Creation (X) Value Access (X) Value Translation


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Food Innovation Sighting – Waffle Taco

Food Innovation Sighting - Waffle TacoDo you ever see a product that makes you wonder either:

A. Why didn’t I think of that?
B. How come nobody ever thought of that before?

Well, those are the thoughts that hit me when I opened the newspaper this morning and was greeted by a surprisingly tasty looking Waffle Taco that Taco Bell is launching to anchor their new breakfast menu (formerly known as First Meal at their restaurants). Now to be honest, for over a decade (and still to this day) have felt that ascribing the restaurant label to a Taco Bell was quite generous, and always wondered why people go to Taco Bell when there are so many good Taquerias and Taco Trucks around. Sorry, Taco Bell. But recently they have surprisingly been one of the more innovative fast food players.

In a previous post – Food Innovation Sighting – Doritos Tacos – I took to blogging about their previous food innovation, the Doritos Locos Taco, which initially came in the Nacho Cheese variety and was then followed by the Cool Ranch one. Frito Lay subsequently then made the taco shells available in grocery stores. Not a bad little piece of supplier innovation if you ask me.

Now, Taco Bell is following up their Doritos Locos Taco success with the Waffle Taco.

A waffle wrapped around scrambled eggs and either sausage or bacon (with a side of maple syrup). I have to say the picture here looks pretty tasty, but of course I know it won’t look like this in reality when someone orders it (see False Advertising? and follow the link in the article).

Innovation doesn’t have to be hard, it doesn’t have to involve coming up with something that is really hard for others to discover, sometimes the most successful innovations are those that come from ‘land mine’ ideation, which is basically focusing the energy of your group (or company) on the following question:

What potential innovation ideas are so close to us and should be so obvious to us, that if they were a land mine, we would probably blow ourselves up because we’re not seeing them?

So, keep looking for those obvious innovations that you’re missing now and keep innovating!

P.S. I’m sure some enterprising restaurateur out there thought of the waffle taco decades ago, and that makes another point about innovation – that many flashes of brilliance and successful innovations are triggered by seeing something when you’re out in your environment (and why inspiration sits at the core of the Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation).


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Changing Business Models Around

Changing Business Models AroundSome business models and products have been around so long that we just take them for granted, while others concepts that are becoming new business models are so new that we’re not quite sure what to expect. It is probably easiest to explain what I mean and why this juxtaposition is important by looking at a few examples. Most of these examples involve challenging our orthodoxies.

1. Coffee Shops

In the typical coffee shop pretty much anywhere in the world, the business model works like this – you buy a coffee and it comes along with it the right to take up a place at any table in the café for as long as you want. So, coffee buys you time. An article I came across on NPR highlights an entrepreneur in Moscow that has opened a restaurant that loosely translates to the Clockface Café where instead of buying coffee and getting time, you instead buy time ($4/hr per person for the 1st hour and $2 an hour after that, up to a maximum of $12 after 5 hours) and get coffee for free. Ivan Meetin, the founder, plans to open his next café in London. Meanwhile I have heard of similar operations in Paris, and by now they can probably also be found elsewhere. So, in your business what do people get for free, and what do they pay for? And is there an opportunity to change around what you charge for?

2. Waste Disposal

In many businesses, and in the creation of most products, there is waste. And in most cases, businesses pay to have this waste removed from their premises. Or there may be waste that the customer has to pay to have removed. But this doesn’t always have to be the case.

KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, etc. used to have to pay to have their used fryer oil picked up, but now thanks to the rise of biodiesel they may even make money from this waste product.

Chicken FeetChicken processors used to throw the feet away after processing a truckload of chickens, but after they discovered that chicken feet are a delicacy in several Asian countries, they stopped throwing them away and instead started exporting them. In fact, chicken feet sell for more per pound than chicken breasts in China.

Broken OREO’s used to have no value before Cookies ‘n’ Cream ice cream (and now Cookies ‘n’ Cream OREO’s) were discovered.

And finally, I came across an example of a bottle cap concept created by designers from the Lanzhou University of Technology in China, intended to give poor children access to building blocks for play, from what was previously thrown away.

Building Caps

3. Discounts for Data

Data security and privacy is becoming an increasingly hot topic, and in the past companies would either ask customers for their data and not give them anything for it, or just not ask for it. But now we are seeing some interesting models of companies asking customers for data and instead giving them something of value in exchange. For example, Urban Outfitters rewards users that respond to promotions inside their mobile app or to users that allow its app to connect to their Twitter or Instagram accounts with points that can be redeemed for sale previews, concert tickets, or early access to new pieces. What data do you want from your customers? What is it worth to you? How could this exchange be made engaging and not be seen as a purely financial transaction?

4. The Soft Drink Category is Saturated and Cold

Soft drinks… How many people out there think that the soft drink category is a blue ocean full of incredible opportunities for unbounded growth for established soft drink makers? Most people would say that this is a mature category and a tough place for companies, full of merciless competition. But yet, people continue to innovate and challenge this orthodoxy. Witness a couple of interesting new concepts.

Shericks ShakesBritain has always been a hotbed of innovation, and the country that brought us Pret a Manger and Innocent smoothies brings us this tasty treat. Mr. Sherick’s Shakes brings people a little bit of luxury to their day in the form of their high quality milkshakes.

Meanwhile in Japan, there is a growing trend manifesting in a wave of product launches in the soft drink category that are not cold, but instead hot. Witness this example of what has always been a cold drink, Ginger Ale, being brought into the Japanese market as a hot beverage by Coca Cola’s Canada Dry unit.

Canada Dry Hot Ginger AlePeople always love something new and different, even if it is something old that has disappeared from the market. This is why fashion runs in cycles, and in a mature category like soft drinks there is no reason why we shouldn’t keep these principles in mind and see if now is the time to bring something back, or to see if there is an orthodoxy that we shouldn’t now look at challenging to see if an opportunity might not be created.

Conclusion

Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative. Value comes not just from physical invention, or business model innovation, but from psychological and emotional benefits as well and the creation of new psychological or emotional value can happen in any industry at any point in time, no matter how mature the category seems to be. We as humans are strange creatures and we simultaneously fight against change (and hold back innovation as a result) and embrace new things (or at least like to try them). So challenge your patterns of accepted thinking to look for opportunity and work to overcome your beliefs that everything that could be done has been done in your industry.

Keep innovating!


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Backwards Innovation

A Case Study in Accidental Innovation

Backwards Innovation - Chipotle Mexican GrillAccording to Wikipedia, Chipotle was founded twenty years ago by Steve Ells (1993). Chipotle had 16 restaurants (all in Colorado) when McDonald’s Corporation became a major investor in 1998. By the time McDonald’s fully divested itself from Chipotle in 2006, the chain had grown to over 500 locations. Today, 37,310 employees at more than 1,400 locations in 43 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., three Canadian provinces, the United Kingdom, and France (all company-owned, no franchises), help Chipotle generate an annual net income of US$278 million (2012).

Also according to Wikipedia, founder Steve Ells attended the Culinary Institute of America before becoming a line cook for Jeremiah Tower at Stars in San Francisco. It was there that Ells observed the popularity of the burritos in the Mission District taquerías. In 1993, Ells took what he learned in San Francisco and opened the first Chipotle in Denver, Colorado, in a former Dolly Madison Ice Cream Store near the University of Denver campus using an $85,000 loan from his father. Ells and his father calculated that the original restaurant would need to sell 107 burritos per day to be profitable, but after one month, it was selling over 1,000 burritos a day.

But according to Steve Ells himself in the video below, he didn’t start out to create a chain of burrito shops, but instead opened the first one as a means to generate cash to open the restaurant he dreamed of opening. So he didn’t set out to help create the growing casual dining category, he didn’t set out to be the head of a multi-billion dollar company, but he did set out with a vision to create a restaurant that would serve fast and fresh Mexican-inspired cuisine.

See the Chipotle Story – How it All Started:

See more about the Chipotle Culinary Story:

Watch One Man’s Quest for Better Tasting Pork (while released in 2011 it, according to Wikipedia, details a journey made in 1999):

And it is in this journey to understand how he can source better ingredients at scale a couple of years ago that led to the 2001 launch of their Food with Integrity mission. Some of the most recent efforts to support this mission have become more fun and more social. This includes activities like the release of a video called Back to the Start that features a Coldplay song ‘The Scientist’ sung by country music legend Willie Nelson that was made available for download with proceeds benefiting the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation and its dedication to creating a sustainable, healthful and equitable food future.

And most recently, this year they have created an App called Chipotle Scarecrow that rails against factory farming and they’ve created this movie called The Scarecrow to promote the App:

Don’t worry, all of this is leading somewhere.

It has led me to an idea that I want you to consider as you look at your innovation efforts.

It is the idea of Backwards Innovation.

What is Backwards Innovation?

It is the idea that in our quest to become ever more efficient and more effective, sometimes we go too far.

Or we pass a point from which, we can actually create innovation by going…backwards.

So today, the area of greatest opportunity for innovation in the food industry is in backwards innovation, by creating value by seeking in some ways LESS efficiency and by becoming MORE effective in DIFFERENT ways.

So, as you all continue to seek innovation, you must sometimes ask yourselves:

  • In our quest for efficiency have we gone too far in some ways, or have we reached a point where opportunities are created that might at first glance look less efficient?
  • In our quest for greater effectiveness, should we now be seeking to be more effective in different ways?
  • Have we been seeking increased technology for so long now in this area that now people almost want less technology?

These are just three backwards innovation questions you might ask yourself.

What other backwards innovation questions can you think of?


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Kentucky ‘Fraud’ Chicken – Food Fail

Kentucky Fraud Chicken - Food FailCost Cutting Gone Mad

Every time I turn around, food continues to get less and less real.

Imagine my surprise when in a fit of weakness I turned up at my local KFC (yes, the word chicken is no longer in the name) and they simultaneously handed me honey sauce that is only 7% honey and told me that they were going to soon be offering chickens without bones as an option.

How can a chicken walk around without bones? 😉

Needless to say, that was my last visit to KFC unless I get stranded in an airport somewhere with no other option.

Is the unending quest for corporate profits in the food industry and our own quest for convenience killing us?

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but there is no doubt that chain restaurant food is getting less and less real and this is just the latest example of a company crossing the line of decency (in my opinion) in pursuit of profits.

What is your favorite food fail story?

NOTE: While not technically fraud, I bet that if you surveyed 100 people after they consumed honey sauce, that probably 80% of the people would tell you that they just ate honey, not corn syrup with a taste of honey. For what it’s worth.

Stay tuned for more high profile food fails…

P.S. Thanks to Glenn for turning me on to some Far Side humor to the boneless chicken issue.

Boneless Chicken Ranch

Image credit: Gary Larson, Just-Ask-Jill.com


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