Fast Food Lesson #1: Customers Are Key

This is the first entry for a series of lessons I learned in the fast food industry when I worked at McDonald’s back in the early 90′s. Read the introduction at Fast Food Lessons – A New Series.

Note: I am not an advocate for McDonald’s, do not own stock in the company, and don’t plan to step foot in one again if I can help it, for reasons not relevant to this series.

Fast Food Lesson #1: Customers Are Key

One of the first things I learned working in the fast food industry was how important customers were. Customers are necessary for keeping a company operating, but are also important in shaping many business operations and decision points. Here are three things that stuck with me after working the daily grind at McD’s.

Customers keep the business running, and your job intact.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be in many companies. I bet you can quickly think of at least three bad customer service experiences you have had in the last three months. Sub-standard customer service, interactions, and expectations have become common place in today’s society.

Customer Service, by Alan Cleaver

The good news is that companies who make customers feel valued, listen to them, and actually improve their business based on customer suggestions are further ahead of the competition. Customers return when they have had great experiences.

While working at McDonald’s I focused on ensuring customers had a great experience. It all started with the first friendly and happy greeting, listening carefully to their requests, filling the request quickly and accurately, and finishing with a friendly good-bye. If anything happened to go wrong with an order, I quickly stepped in to compensate before they became frustrated and upset.

Customers keep businesses running and jobs intact in every other industry.

Let’s use the software industry as our example through this article.

Whether you are a programmer, a tester, a project manager, in operations, or in any other role, we need customers so we have a business. The customer may be an actual end-user of a product or service, another company who is purchasing a product or service for delivery to another customer, or even an internal user of the software.

Regardless of who they are, it is our job to provide a positive experience for that customer. That means understanding what problem they need solved, learning about what they need to be happy with the product or service, determining how they will actually use it, and ensuring every interaction is focused on the customers’ satisfaction and happiness.

Customers drive future products, if you listen to them.

Every customer is going to have some sort of feedback about the product or service they obtained. It may be positive in identifying how well it works for them, recommendations to improve it’s usefulness for them, or complaints about how it doesn’t satisfy their need at all.

Running a business comes down to understanding what customers need and why they will buy something. If you don’t provide something they need and will purchase, you’ll quickly be out of business. This makes sense, but how often do you take customer feedback into account?

Context: Restaurants located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.

Light Bulb, by Kent Yoshimura

In the early 90′s there were several products that McDonald’s offered that I really liked. Salads and pizza. For whatever reason, neither product sold well enough to keep them on the menu. Corporate listened to the customer feedback (which was represented in sales numbers, and in surveys and feedback forms) and removed both of them from the menu. While I was disappointed, customers were happy when new burger selections appeared on the menu to replace them.

Flash forward to early in the new millennium. You may remember that salads made a comeback and were added back to the menu as customers became more health conscious in their dietary habits. Additionally, as consumers became more environmentally conscious, most of the styrofoam packaging was done away with and replaced with paper and cardboard products.

Customers should also drive product evolution and new product creation in the software industry.

I have worked in organizations where someone internal to the company came up with ‘the next big thing’, developed it, and it flopped. Why? Because customers didn’t need it, want it, or it didn’t satisfy all their needs appropriately.

Learning customer needs and wants is critical for developing successful products. Product Owners/Managers need this information to devise user stories/requirements that will actually satisfy customers and make profits. Programmers need this information to ensure they program a solution that satisfies customer requests, wants, and needs. Testers need this information to confirm that what is developed not only fulfills a need and desire, but is actually usable for the customer in the way they will use it, continues to evolve per customer feedback, and satisfies many non-spoken product/service requirements.

This requires time to research, learn, and understand customer desires.

Customers evolve company image and business direction.

Most companies are in business to make money. To make money, businesses need customers. To get customers, they need to know how to attract their target market(s). Understanding the desired customer base, their lifestyles, and their interests is paramount for promoting an image and devising a marketing strategy that attracts, and keeps, the people wanted as customers.

Context: Restaurants located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.

Do you remember the marketing strategy that McDonald’s used in the 80’s and early 90’s? They targeted most of their efforts at children. If children desperately wanted to go to their restaurant, parents would take them. From now-classic characters such as Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and the Fry Guys, through to the bright and bubbly in-store decor and family-sized booths, the company image was all about the kids. Some stores even had train cabooses that were used to host birthday parties, much to the delight of many children.

In the mid-to-late 90’s, McDonald’s changed their target to be less child-focused and more adult and family-focused. In-store decor evolved to be more subdued to attract a new customer base, Children’s Play Places were added so parents could have a break from their kids while knowing they were safe and having fun while in the restaurant, the Monopoly game was introduced to collect pieces and win prizes, and the infamous characters were fading away. McDonald’s was growing up.

If You Are Afraid of Change Leave it Here, by Katy Stoddard

From there McDonald’s further evolved to focus predominantly on the adult and teenage market. The company image and direction shifted to obtain customers outside of the established children-and-family market. They became more trendy, hip, and grown-up by introducing the “I’m Lovin’ It” commercials, advertisements and commercials focused on the working professional, and updated decor reminiscent of upscale cafe’s. McDonald’s touted a cool and adult-friendly image.

Now consider your company.

Does it evolve its image as the target customer base evolves? Does it change marketing strategies to acquire new target markets? Does the company consider customer lifestyles and interests into how it promotes itself?

Customers aren’t just the people who make a purchase for an end product or service, but are also internal to a company. Does your internal organization modify and adapt its image as other organizations in the company evolve and change? Do you know how to appeal to them so that working relationships remain strong over time? Does your organization evolve as your internal customers evolve?

Let’s go one step further.

Let’s say you have an external customer who likes to be heavily involved in defining a project, makes many changes, and likes to have flexibility in what the final end-product is. Does your organization evolve to use more agile practices that can work with this customer more effectively? Or does it stick with heavy-documentation, everything-is-planned-upfront, and nothing-can-change approaches? Guess how good that customer relationship is going to be.

This isn’t just about the company image and branding. It is also about the processes and methodologies you use to appeal to, work with, and satisfy the customer.

That extends from sales and marketing, product management, programming and testing organizations, operations, and customer support. If your organization isn’t adapting how it operates in order to keep up with the customer needs, you will soon be left in the dust.

What’s Next?

Take a moment and consider whether you, your organization, and your company really value your customers.

• Are customers welcomed, appreciated, and treated as a valuable part of the company/organization?
• Is customer feedback gathered and regularly used to adapt in product creation and evolution?
• Does the company image and business direction evolve according to the needs of the target market?
• Do methodologies and approaches adapt to work seamlessly with customer needs and methods of interaction?

What do you think?  Please share your thoughts below.

Watch for Lesson #2 in the Fast Food Lessons series next week.

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