bringing mobile ordering to the masses.
Chick-fil-A is committed to excellent service for their loyal customers. But, operational efficiencies aside, each restaurant location can only deliver as fast as customers can move through the lines. Could we find a way to broaden their capacity to deliver more, without expanding their footprint or staff?
It’s no secret that customers love Chick-fil-A. But this love often resulted in long lines and lost sales as customers turned away, sometimes before even parking. Through excellent process engineering and industry-leading training programs, Chick-fil-A’s kitchen was able to operate far faster than the front of house could take orders. Chick-fil-A needed a way to increase same-store sales without adding headcount or performing expensive remodels.
Utilizing design thinking, our team crafted an innovative mobile ordering application, Chick-fil-A One, that took full advantage of Chick-fil-A’s best-in-class capacity. We created a GPS-enabled mobile order-ahead solution. Restaurants would be notified of an order when customers were in-route to the store – ensuring no meal was ever cold and long wait times could be avoided. Some locations even provided dedicated mobile pick-up spots to help reduce indoor and drive-thru lines. Add sophisticated and easy mobile payment and loyalty-based rewards to the picture, and Chick-fil-A easily exceeded expectations and delighted its already loyal customer base.
The mobile experience had to provide the same exemplary level of customer service Chick-fil-A is known for. Leveraging customer data, we were able to provide personalized experiences that kept track of customers’ favorite stores, favorite orders and more. Including a “surprise and delight” loyalty program allowed Chick-fil-A to offer, for free, new items to customers, to broaden exposure to the menu. And simple suggestions and easy ordering increased ticket size. The Chick-fil-A mobile experience has set the standard in the QSR space, and many others have followed.
