McDonald’s Mobile Moves

There are few businesses quite as expansive as McDonald’s, with 36,000 locations on Earth, about 15,000 in the U.S. and serving around 69 million people per day (or about 50,000 people per minute). And, that, McDonald’s VP of Global Digital Experiences, Farhan Siddiqi, told Karen Webster, means McDonald’s has an issue that very few other retailers can claim: It’s challenging to identify their “typical customer” because their typical customer is darn near everyone.

“We are so inclusive,” Siddiqi said. “Eighty-nine percent of Americans within the last year visited a McDonald’s. So, when we are asked about our ‘core customer,’ we serve so many, no matter how you look at segments, it is hard to say.”

McDonald’s massive reach is an asset, notes Siddiqi, and will become more of one in the future. But it also means that, as a brand, McDonald’s faces a constantly renewing challenge of providing the same level of customer service and satisfaction that has kept 89 percent of the U.S. population continually hitting the Golden Arches over the course of a lifetime.

Living up to that challenge of providing the “operational excellence” that has defined the brand over many decades, Siddiqi explains, is becoming increasingly complex as the needs of those customers have rapidly evolved over the last several years.

“Customers are living digital lives,” he told Webster, “they are connected on their phone all the time, and the challenge for brands is finding the best way to engage with them.”

Siddiqi said that McDonald’s has always been about ubiquitous convenience, but that’s more than just being a walk or a drive away. He said that consumers want to engage with brands on their terms — in their living room on the couch or in their office. Siddiqi’s observation: consumers want to plan their food journey anywhere, and brands have to meet them.

And so that is what McDonald’s has set out to do. It’s currently beta testing mobile order ahead in select West Coast locations and in the greater Washington DC area locations. That test comes ahead of a national launch later this year.

Is Digital Golden at The Golden Arches?

McDonald’s is not the first to the gate when it comes to mobile-order ahead, but at their size and scale, simply flipping the switch on and letting the chips fall where they may is not an option.

Siddiqi noted in his conversation with Webster that the implementation of order ahead and the rest of McDonald’s emerging digital options is about fully redesigning the service. That means rolling out carefully — and with lots of feedback — to make sure that from the ground up, McDonald’s is building what they want to build.

“It is all very positive right now,” he said.

That’s something that Siddiqi said wasn’t that much of a surprise given the level of planning that went into the test. That said, he also fully expects kinks to be discovered along the way — after all, what are tests for? Key to that input is how consumers feel about the experience, but also how store operations are working. Getting crew feedback and franchise owner feedback is crucial, since McDonald’s was founded on the predicate that customers don’t have to wait for their food.

“I am have been so impressed by the maniacal focus that goes into every detail of the operation [for mobile order ahead], Siddiqi said. “We don’t think of it in terms of operational efficiency, we think about it in terms of operational excellence,” something Siddiqi said was all about measuring and making efficient all of the tiniest of details.

That’s something that Siddiqi says has forced a focus on their roll-out of order-ahead as a complete end-to-end experience. Siddiqi says that McDonald’s allows its customers to place their early order and then to pick up in store or via the drive-through or via a curbside pickup. The drive-through itself, he said, is a major strategic advantage because the customer doesn’t have to even get out of their car and cars stop only once — to pick up their order, not to place their order and pick it up.

“What we are learning is that customers really like skipping the line. Over 50 percent of people that are testing it chose to either pick it up through the drive-through, curbside or counter side.”

And that early buzz comes as good news for two reasons. One, it allows McDonalds to hopefully capture more market share — customers that might currently be only very occasional McDonald’s customers might be persuaded to give in to the eternal craving for the fries more often it were more tap accessible.

But more exciting, notes Siddiqi, are the kinds of things that can come next.

What’s Next

McDonald’s is large and complex — and while that means there are challenges involved in something like a major digital experience upgrade, the upside is what is unlocked at the other side of it.

“There’s a huge opportunity in this space that so far has really focused on fast and convenient. But there’s also a chance to get to know the customer and get to know their behavior — you know, their preferences,” Siddiqi said. The opportunity to explore and test levels of really meaningful engagement and rewards — even with things as simple as a ‘thank-you’ — he feels can provide a baseline upon which to build a true omnichannel commerce network with new experiences, more data and increased ties with operational efficiency.

Something that Siddiqi also said is delivering meaningful rewards — that doesn’t always mean a discount, but rather an experience that consumers like.

“What excites me is what we can do once we build the basic platform — that is when the fun begins.”

And McDonald’s — the brand that literally invented the Happy Meal — is particularly interested in stepping up to that challenge.

“The [McDonald’s] brand is about fun, we really create delicious ‘feel-good’ moments for everybody that are also light hearted. Digital could really lead the way for the next generation of fun and lightheartedness,” he said.

Because McDonald’s, being as large as it is with a footprint in over 100 nations worldwide, has a chance to do something that very few other players will ever get to — build out one of the world’s largest omnichannel networks. Already in motion is the mash-up of mobile order ahead and geofencing — so that McDonald’s can start prepping the customer’s food when they are in proximity to their pick-up location and make sure it is also served hot — with the delivery capacity they’ve been offering in Asia for two decades, and is now coming to the U.S. through its new food delivery partnership with Uber.

The goal of all of it is the same, Siddiqi told Webster — finding paths to continue to engage the customer in ways that are relevant to them.

“If a brand can’t do that, they’ll miss out on their customers.”