Service at the Window

Instructor: Rick Fortman, Vice President of Operations, Carl’s Jr.

Credentials: 2008 Leader in Customer Service

Last November we held a franchise and company operations symposium to talk about drive-thru and speed of service. We didn’t want to talk about alibis or excuses. We wanted to talk about things we could do to improve service.

We held a series of meetings, got with the franchisees, and tried to get everyone more focused on customer service than we had been. On the company side, we did some incentives. We had a drive-thru rally at the beginning of last year. We did an operational assessment that was totally focused on the drive-thru and the whole experience: whether you got your order correct; if we suggested sold; were we polite; what was our service time; did we thank you; was the order hot; was it fresh; was it good. We saw good results from that because it got people focused. We slowly saw our sales improve, too, on the drive-thru side.

We had programs where employees would win $20 gift cards to different places if they went through all the steps of the service piece at the drive-thru. We even had teams go out to all the restaurants and conduct mystery shops and did some evaluations and ratings. We took the scores and recognized the best and rewarded them. Then we went back and encouraged the ones who needed help by going back through the Six Dollar Service piece.

Six Dollar Service is making sure we give a friendly greeting when guests first get to the drive-thru and saying all the pleases and thank- yous … asking people if they need anything else, if they want ketchup or those kind of things. It’s smiling when guests get to the drive-thru window. We have Six Dollar burgers, and we really wanted to match service to those products.

Our service piece addresses that you need to take extra steps in order to be better than your competition. Everybody is working on service programs at the same time. Some of the things Six Dollar Service encompasses allow us to stand out and do better.

One of the things we always say is, “Make the guest happy.” That means even if someone orders something and they thought they were getting something else, go ahead and replace it. We don’t question them.

Our operations service group is in the process of working on a more comprehensive drive-thru operating system. It’s a more structured process of going through all the steps, from taking the order to passing the food out, and being consistent in that approach from restaurant to restaurant.

Usually, people are in a hurry to go through the drive-thru, but if the drive-thru is very consistent with its service times—always three minutes or always five minutes … if people know they’re going to get their order within that timeframe, people make adjustments in their schedules as long as they get what they want.