Why Restaurants Should Follow McDonald's Self-Service Queue Management Strategy?

The businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE are adopting self-service solutions to enhance their customers’ experience and to boost their productivity and efficiency. Earlier, restaurants and fast food services were not as that interested in adopting to such innovative solutions. When McDonald’s introduced self-service food ordering kiosk, everyone noticed, both the customers and the competitors as well. People started enjoying the experience of being able to order instantly without lining up in long queues. The other businesses should also learn from this example. In fact the self-service market had witnessed a huge growth all over the world. Businesses from all sectors are trying to implement self-service technologies to improve their customer experience and to reduce the service cost. The fast-food restaurants and food industry have reported a significant growth after deploying the self-service solutions. In this blog we will discuss why other restaurants should also follow the McDonald’s self-service kiosk and queue management solution to boost their sales, productivity, profitability and customer happiness.

Reduce Customer Wait Time and Customer Churn

The customer wait time is the single most destructive element of the customer journey and is considered to be responsible for almost 30% to up to 80% of the customer churn. The customer churn means a customer who is already willing to make a purchase or convert, leave without converting. In case of food and restaurant businesses this is due to long queues and crowd formation in the restaurant. Consider yourself in a hurry to have a meal at the lunch time or either a dinner. You have planned to go for a McDonald’s meal and as soon as you reached there, you saw too many people waiting in long lines, will you happily wait there or will you look up for other options? Of course almost 8 out of 10 people would at least consider looking up for other available options rather waiting in the long queues. And whoever will wait in the queues they will be unhappy with that. Resultantly the customer experience is ruined and the customer churn rate will also rise. However, when there is a self-service kiosk the customers don’t have to wait in the queues, they can simply place their order from the interactive touch screen food ordering self-service kiosk.

Improve Customer Experience and Gain Customer Loyalty

The McDonald’s self-service queue management strategy have many benefits. It provide a lot of chances to improve customer journey and customer interaction. For example, if a customer comes to a restaurant, he/she had to wait in the queue for let say 10 to 15 minutes or even more, at the end when they will reach at the counter, the customer service agent or cashier ask for their order, they immediately tell them what they need, then the cashier start up selling them without realizing that the customer is already anxious and stressed due to the waiting time he/she spend in the queue. This could further ruin the customer experience. However with a self-service queue management strategy the customer can simply place their order from the food ordering interactive kiosk. The restaurant can provide large and detailed menu on the bright large display screen, along with the suggestive items or promotional items that can successfully up sell without bothering the customer. As soon as the customer finalize their order they got signed up for the queue which significantly reduce their wait time.

The customer can also avail facility to pay with multiple different payment methods which is also very convenient for the customers. In addition to that another big advantage of the self-serving queue management strategy is that the customer always get the correct order, as they themselves are placing the order from the self-service food ordering kiosk, so there is no chance of cashier or sales agent mixing up their order with someone else or any such thing. This could significantly improve the customer experience and ensure higher levels of customer happiness and customer satisfaction. The customer happiness is a key to customer loyalty and the customer loyalty is a key to success for any business. The loyal customers stick with the brand, it is hard to switch them, they often neglect any bad experience and they tend to be a good brand advocate in real-world and in social media and online. This provide a great long term advantage and help improving brand image.

Enhance Communication and Increase Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is very important to add excitement to the customer business relationship. The interactive self-service kiosk comes with a medium sized bright touch screen display. Which could attract customers from far away. Sometimes it happens that we planned to buy something and went to the market or mall, suddenly a bright screen displaying a great offer that caught our eye and instead of going as per the plan we decide to first inspect what they are selling. Same is applicable for the restaurants and the fast-food businesses, especially the one who are located in a food court or in the area where other businesses from the same category are also located. Anyway, when a customer reaches to a digital kiosk either for information or to place an order, the restaurant can increase customer engagement by running promotions, providing information about latest offers, etc. Such communication strategies are great to increase customer engagement and also help improving the sales.

Improve Employee Efficiency and Quality of Service

The interactive self-service kiosks are not used to replace the employees. In fact the interactive self-service food ordering kiosks are used to divide the foot fall of the customers and reduce the work load of the employees. The balanced workload ensure highest work efficiency and better order accuracy. It also reduce the queues hence it also help the employees to provide better service and makes it easier for them to satisfy their customers. When the employees have too much workload and at the same time the customers have to wait for a long time in long queues, it is harder to deliver a satisfactory service. However, when the customers are divided between the self-service interactive food ordering kiosk and the counters then both the employees and the customers have less strain and it is easier to make them happy and satisfy.

Increase Sales and Revenue

The self-service food ordering kiosks have several benefits for the customers and the employees along with that it is great for generating more sales and revenue for the business. The interactive user interface allows the customers to easily navigate through the menu and it can also suggest products, add-ons, special offers, etc. Which makes upselling easier and more convenient. For example, if a customer is ordering for a regular meal, at the checkout step the kiosk can suggest them some add-on or soft-drink or fries or any sweet or any such thing, and most of the time the customers add them to their menu that is how the interactive self-service food ordering kiosks can help businesses in upselling. The self-service interactive kiosk doesn’t require any staff, it is fully automated and it can be a great alternate to adding more counters. In addition to that there is no regular or monthly expense of the self-service food ordering kiosk, it doesn’t require much maintenance, and the entire operation is fully automated. The interactive self-service kiosks technology have a longer lifecycle and can last for years without needing any upgrade or modification. This makes it a very cost-effective solution in long terms.

Easy Scalability – Aim for Future

The interactive self-service food ordering kiosks are built on a most widely used computer technology, which makes upgrades, expansion and modification in the system very convenient and cost effective. Usually the interactive touch screens comes with in-built computer. The computers runs on Windows or Android, both are the most widely used technologies. The restaurants can easily acquire a company to develop the required solution for them. The customization cost is also very less and the upgrade or modification is also cost-efficient. There are tons of peripherals and accessories available in the market that can be integrated with the interactive self-service kiosks to enhance its functionality and to improve the user experience. In addition to that the self-service queue management system is based on a centralized server, which allow the businesses to easily add more kiosks at any time and any place. The centralized information center also enables remote management and monitoring features and allow the businesses to manage the entire network from a central location (such as head office) or even from any remote location via internet. These features makes it a future ready tool and also help businesses to minimize their cost in upgrades and customization.

Business Intelligence Data Collection and Customer Feedback

The interactive self-service food ordering kiosk is a great tool for self-service queue management strategy. It also collect business intelligence data from various touch points in the customer journey and also help businesses understand the popularity of certain products and aid them in communication and marketing strategies. The system can provide in-depth system usage and statistical data with in-built analytical tools and various reporting mechanisms to compile actionable reports from the business intelligence data. Moreover the self-service interactive food ordering kiosk can also be used to collect customer feedback. The restaurants and businesses can conduct short customer feedback surveys and polls via the interactive kiosk. Which can provide further insight to the customer’s mind and let businesses understand the demand, needs and expectations of its customers. The restaurants and businesses can use the businesses intelligence and customer feedback data to identify the areas of improvement and then they can lay down their future strategies and make policies that suit best with their customers and business goals.

Conclusion

The McDonalds’ self-service queue management strategy was a great idea. It not only helped them to boost their operational efficiency but it also increases customer satisfaction and sales. There are several factors that can contribute to customer journey and customer experience. Bad customer experience and long queues are the major cause of customer churn which deprived the restaurants from valuable sales. However, by deploying an interactive self-service queue management strategy a restaurant can enjoy various advantages such as improved customer experience by reducing wait time and offering instant service via interactive self-service food ordering kiosks. Moreover the restaurants can easily increase customer engagements and improve their upselling as well. The interactive touch screen based digital menus attract more customers and also improve the size of each sale by suggestive marketing techniques and appealing promotional campaigns. The customers who are using the food ordering kiosks can easily explore the entire menu, hence there is no chance of error or mistake in the order.

The restaurant can also utilize the business intelligence data that is collected from the self-service food ordering kiosk and system which is very helpful in making improvements to ensure ultimate efficiency and customer satisfaction. The customer feedback collection is also a great tool to acquire first-hand business intelligence from the customers. RSI Concepts is a leading customer satisfaction provider specialized in interactive self-service solutions. If you want to learn more about the topic or if you have an enquiry please feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

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Why Restaurants Should Follow McDonald’s Self-Service Queue Management Strategy?