This one's for you, DD
By Richard Gibson
Dow Jones News Service
July 11, 2001
Rude employees in its restaurants are costing McDonald's Corp. millions of dollars in lost sales each year, according to company documents.
The problem has become so serious that the fast-food giant plans to create what it calls "customer recovery teams" to combat it.
Earlier this year, a University of Michigan study on customer satisfaction ranked the world's largest fast-food chain among the poorest-performing retailers. At the time, Oak Brook-based McDonald's disputed the results, contending that they "don't track with the facts about our business."
But internal documents obtained by Dow Jones Newswires and posted on an in-house company Web site suggest that unhappy patrons are a major headache for senior management. "On any given day, 11 percent of McDonald's customers are dissatisfied with their visit and take the time to share their complaint with the restaurant," the materials said.
Slow service, wrong orders, dirty stores and employees who seem to have forgotten the company's slogan, "We love to see you smile," could be making an even greater impact than that 11 percent may indicate, however. That's because "most customers who have complaints do not share it with the restaurants--they just don't come back," attendees at a recent McDonald's conference on the subject were told.
As part of its effort to curb customer dissatisfaction, McDonald's hopes to better educate its store managers and franchisees on how to field complaints.
Just how costly is rude service? Unhappy customers could mean an average of $60,000 in lost sales per year for each U.S. McDonald's, those at the conference learned. With nearly 13,000 restaurants in the U.S. alone, that estimate would indicate a potential annual loss of at least $750 million.
McDonald's declined to comment beyond saying that it "has always been, is, and will remain focused on total customer satisfaction." Spokeswoman Anna Rozenich said the company "has a long-standing policy of not discussing leaked documents."
As part of a major domestic initiative to double McDonald's sales within 10 years, two "customer recovery teams" will be created, the company said. The documents don't elaborate on what these teams will do.
http://chicagotribune.com/business/businessnews/article/0,2669,ART-52905,FF.html
------------------
"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."
--Winifred Carriere
By Richard Gibson
Dow Jones News Service
July 11, 2001
Rude employees in its restaurants are costing McDonald's Corp. millions of dollars in lost sales each year, according to company documents.
The problem has become so serious that the fast-food giant plans to create what it calls "customer recovery teams" to combat it.
Earlier this year, a University of Michigan study on customer satisfaction ranked the world's largest fast-food chain among the poorest-performing retailers. At the time, Oak Brook-based McDonald's disputed the results, contending that they "don't track with the facts about our business."
But internal documents obtained by Dow Jones Newswires and posted on an in-house company Web site suggest that unhappy patrons are a major headache for senior management. "On any given day, 11 percent of McDonald's customers are dissatisfied with their visit and take the time to share their complaint with the restaurant," the materials said.
Slow service, wrong orders, dirty stores and employees who seem to have forgotten the company's slogan, "We love to see you smile," could be making an even greater impact than that 11 percent may indicate, however. That's because "most customers who have complaints do not share it with the restaurants--they just don't come back," attendees at a recent McDonald's conference on the subject were told.
As part of its effort to curb customer dissatisfaction, McDonald's hopes to better educate its store managers and franchisees on how to field complaints.
Just how costly is rude service? Unhappy customers could mean an average of $60,000 in lost sales per year for each U.S. McDonald's, those at the conference learned. With nearly 13,000 restaurants in the U.S. alone, that estimate would indicate a potential annual loss of at least $750 million.
McDonald's declined to comment beyond saying that it "has always been, is, and will remain focused on total customer satisfaction." Spokeswoman Anna Rozenich said the company "has a long-standing policy of not discussing leaked documents."
As part of a major domestic initiative to double McDonald's sales within 10 years, two "customer recovery teams" will be created, the company said. The documents don't elaborate on what these teams will do.
http://chicagotribune.com/business/businessnews/article/0,2669,ART-52905,FF.html
------------------
"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."
--Winifred Carriere
