Following a broader digital innovation initiative looking at restaurant operations and employee experience, it was identified that potential issues existed within the drive-thru customer experience.
It was perceived that menu boards could be difficult to read from the car, communicating over the intercom was unreliable, and customers were anxious about holding up the queue while they decided what to order.
The problem was, it was just that, a perception, based largely on anecdotal evidence. If true it represented a significant potential upside for the business and customer satisfaction, but it needed validating.
It was the perfect problem to test using design thinking principles, allowing the challenges to be rapidly verified in a low impact and controlled environment, insulated from the wider business.
The drive-thru experience was selected as the target for the first of a series of design sprints; a structured process to validate the perceived issues, and ideate on and test potential solutions in a low risk, low cost way.
Customer interviews and observational ride-alongs quickly validated many of the perceived issues as accurate, and highlighted a number of broader challenges around menu comprehension.
Out of the ideation process, two solutions were selected to be prototyped and tested in a live customer trial, in order to address to key painpoints in the customer journey:
Both solutions were tested in a live customer trial, and customer feedback was that they were both a resounding success in addressing many of the issues.
The technical prototyping and time and motion study from the trial, also allowed a detailed business case to be prepared, and this was presented to leadership team members for consideration on future investment and further rollout.
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