Top 6 Must-Haves For QSR Omni-channel Success
Before you can redesign your digital experience towards omni-channel nirvana, you need a solid foundation to build upon.
The top 6 must-haves for QSR omni-channel success are:
Sales Data!
You need a quality real-time POS data pipeline to inform your decisions or you will just be throwing money at guesses. Pull data from across a large swath of your locations over time. What products are selling or not? What is and isn’t working? Does this differ by time of day, location, or ordering platform?
This isn’t easy for most brands to do. Many have POS or ordering systems built on legacy frameworks that don’t necessarily work together. Or aren’t easily separated by day-part or segmented into value or combo offerings.
Spend the money and time needed to get a really accurate picture of your data across your retail landscape, customer habits, purchasing trends, and digital channels in as close to real-time as possible. Getting a smart data feed established will pay off in the future and is critical to make informed, nimble decisions.
Customer profiles
Know your customers! Your data feed should have customer segmentations as a filter. Create segments based on store variations, average spend, or need states your brand serves. Your work lunch crowd is different from your family dinner crowd. Or your value consumer’s needs don’t match your highest spenders looking for novelty and new flavors.
Map customer’s journeys by profile type, time of day, region, and store format. How does one customer type differ if they are on your app versus in the drive thru? Does the same customer’s behavior change based on variables like time of day or ordering platform?
Do the research on trends and get a consumer listening subscription to continually monitor changes by location. People aren’t static and your customer base (and potential new customers) are constantly responding to the world around them and changing habits.
Store profiles
Know your stores. I find it amazing that many brands aren’t even sure what there store locations are like. Aren’t 100% sure who has digital menu boards versus print. What are your typical stores like? Highway adjacent with drive thru lanes, urban walk-up, higher education location, suburban sprawl-loving, busy lunch crowd, remote worker hub, etc. Some stores may dominate in late night drive thru snacking while others are lunch destinations.
Create store profiles based on location, store layout, customer touch points available, purchasing trends, and customer types.
Structure your organization for success
Do you have a digital team controlling all your digital channels? Or are in-store kiosks and drive thru handled by the merchandising team while your web and ordering app by someone else? What about e-comm and social media? Do your teams work with the same project management tools and feed into the same asset management structures? Do your digital channels work on the same timelines?
Shockingly many big legacy brands are still structured internally based on antiquated verticals that don’t work together well and have digital as an afterthought. I’ve seen major QSR brands with different departments responsible for different digital channels, all working with different project management tools, and on different schedules. Teams didn’t talk to each other much less have a unified approach. This is very common!
You need executive leadership to support restructuring, if needed, to put digital consumer interactions first and in the hands of a unified digital team. And make them part of the planning phase for your campaigns, product launches, and initiatives so they can influence campaign development and content creation at the beginning. You’ll need to change processes, workflows, and timelines to adopt a digital-first mindset!
Assess your existing digital channels
Take a hard look at all your digital touch points and get granular. What is working and what isn’t? Do a competitive landscape evaluation. How does the function and design compare to your competition?
What are your customers saying about each digital channel? What functions do they love and what do that hate? Are your customers leaning towards one platform over another?
Give yourself a hard look in the mirror or hire someone that can tell you the painful truth about obvious gaps and critical opportunities with each digital channel?
tech stack framework
Do you have the mar/com tech stack needed for a true omni-channel experience? Your consumer channels will need to be linked in an omni-channel ecosystem.
Can you easily update your ordering app with custom content based on loyalty customers, purchasing types, or variable pricing? Can you easily pull data out in real time and review holistically?
Are your digital menu boards modularly structured to allow for switching entrees, combos, sides, etc. easily or swapping combo, value, or personalization menu sections based on location priorities? Do you have the digital asset management tools in place to handle content across platforms so updates cascade everywhere at the same time?
You need to empower your team to unite your digital channels and purchase the software needed to make integration seamless, link to partner software and databases while communicating together.
Now put it all together
Simple, right? Feeling overwhelmed yet? I can help with any and all the steps above. Let’s talk.
