McDonald's Says "Service is broken" and tackles repair

McDonald's has a customer service problem on its hands. In order to build brand loyalty in a service business, a keystone to the marketing strategy must be strong customer service. Customers of this fast food chain have described it as rude, long wait times, and low quality food. This is a difficult problem for McDonald's to repair because almost every restaurant is independently owned and operated, which makes enacting new policies much tougher. McDonald's changed its marketing strategy to incorporate technology to reduce wait time for order placement. Customers are now given a number after their order has been placed, the number will then appear on a screen where he is greeted by a clerk behind the counter will the order is fulfilled. This is helping to develop friendlier customer service because the person operating the register becomes frazzled when the food orders are fulfilled quickly enough which tends to make the customer angry. WSJ pointed out the reason for an increase in complaints is because when a customer is irate, it is easy to contact the company and complain about the service. Customers now have the ability to voice their concern via phone, email, or facebook. High employee turnover in this industry is also a major problem. Most employees only make minimum wage therefore when a better opportunity is available, there is little loyalty to these employers. In some cases employee retention is as low as 40%, high training expenses should be considered into providing a higher wage which could improve customer and employee satisfaction. The firm says after implementing new ordering technology at test location, customer satisfaction has increased significantly. I think this was a unique problem for the company due to most of its 14,000 restaurants held by franchisees.