Inside the Customer Experience

“Would you like fries with that?”

 

A simple phrase can generate 10% to 40% more sales, according to a recent study in which 12 QSR’s were evaluated as part of a mystery shopping study.

 

While this study was limited in scope and it does not appear that sufficient data was collected necessarily (each of the brands were shopped twice at different locations for this study), it does bring home an interesting talking point. Results point to the fact that 54% of the interactions did not lead to an upsell or cross sell.

 

In talking with others about this topic, there are many reasons for failure to upsell or cross sell:

 

1. Employees (usually the younger crowd) may not feel comfortable doing this on a consistent basis. In QSR, often times teens are hired for their first job, and they need to learn skill sets to effectively cross sell and upsell. This is simply a matter of training and encouraging confidence when interacting with customers.

 

2. There may be cases of inadquate training. If employees aren’t familiar with the menu and/or promotions before being put on the front lines, they may not have the tools needed to be able to do this effectively.

 

3. Customers are always seemingly rushed these days, and employees may not want to “bother” them. Similarly, they may have attempted to upsell or cross sell to an unpleasant customer, which leads to a negative experience and they are leery to do this going forward.

 

4. During busier times, there may not be enough staff available, and employees are rushed to serve customers as quickly as possible and may “cut corners” by not upselling or cross selling.

 

During training of new staff, it is important to fully equip employees to be able to do this as a natural part of the conversation when interacting with guests. Continually review of menu options and promotions can help as well. Customers are more open to upselling attempts when it’s done in a natural manner that “makes sense” – if a customer is dining along and orders a value meal for dine in, asking “Would you like to add a second meal for only $3.00” probably isn’t the way to go. However, mentioning promotions or adding a dessert or larger beverage option might go over better.

 

Not sure how cross selling attempts can impact your bottom line? Take a look at our interactive cross sell chart to see the  numbers for yourself.

 

QSR’s have a good advantage with regard to upselling and cross selling over other verticals, such as retail or banking – take advantage of the opportunities and help your staff to consistently upsell and cross sell. It can go a long way for your bottom line.

 

 

When a business expands, there is a lot to consider. When you’re franchising, there’s even more at stake. You want to be sure that you survive the growing pains as easily as possible, but it can be difficult making sure that the new locations and franchisees are branding appropriately and holding their staff to the same corporate standards that you do.

 

This is where mystery shopping can really help. We see a lot of clients coming to us for help when they reach 8-10 locations, or they start expanding out of state. Travel expenses can add up quickly, leaving you without the chance to check in on new locations as frequently as you’d like. You also can’t get a true sense of what is happening when you visit anyway – they are likely to know you’re coming and will prepare to put their best foot forward during your stay.

 

Mystery shopping can be an objective, third party evaluation of a business, making sure that a franchise or new location is measuring up to expectations. This can be anything from:

 

• Uniform compliance
• Brand messaging within the location
• Promotional signage
• Menu consistency – shoppers can take pictures of their meals to ensure they are presented correctly
• Pricing

 

It’s a cost effective method for ensuring uniformity during the periods of growth. In our experience, this has been useful for many companies and franchise shopping has uncovered many situations the clients would not have been aware of otherwise. Below are some examples:

 

1. A fast casual chain conducted mystery shops on their franchised locations as well as the corporate owned locations. Two franchised locations were found to be experiencing issues. The first would not adhere to business hours; shoppers would visit close to opening or closing time, only to find the location closed. The second location had a more serious issue – over a brief period of time, corporate noticed that their mystery shopping scores plummeted. Upon further investigation, they found that the franchise owner was no longer interested in running the business and was letting it run without her supervision. It was clear that this needed to be addressed immediately, and was likely handled sooner than it would have been without these measures in place.

 

2. A retail chain found that one of their retail locations was surpassing all of the others when it came to performance scores on their mystery shops, as well as overall foot traffic and customer satisfaction. Because the report contained a narrative detail of the shopper’s experience, they learned that this location implemented steps that were not originally part of corporate expectations that went above and beyond. Seeing the success with this, they were able to have this franchise owner assist in developing this standard across all of their locations, making their brand even better.

 

3. A business that was just starting to franchise and expand across state lines was nervous about maintaining uniformity. They implemented the mystery shopping program and used the scores from their corporate locations as a benchmark by which to measure the franchised locations’ performance. This objective, third party metric was helpful in guiding new franchisees as they built their business.

 

Growing pains can be tough, but thinking ahead and planning to put the right steps in place to alleviate some of the potential issues can help make expanding successful in the long run.