Friendliness and Technology Reign Supreme in the 2023 Intouch Insight Annual Drive-Thru Study

The 23rd Annual Intouch Insight Drive-Thru Study was released today in partnership with QSR® Magazine to examine the drive-thru performance of ten of the leading quick-serve restaurants:  Arby’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr., Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’, Hardee’s, KFC, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Wendy’s.

OTTAWA, ON, - Intouch Insight Ltd. (TSXV: INX) (OTCQX: INXSF) announces today, the release of the 23rd Annual Drive-Thru Study, in partnership with QSR® Magazine. This study, which examines the drive-thru operations of ten of the leading quick-serve chains, releases annual industry benchmarks for speed of service, accuracy, and satisfaction with the level of service. The report features quantitative data from 1491 customer visits performed across the United States.

While many of the brands saw incremental improvements in their scores year over year, there were a few standouts:

• Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A and Carl’s Jr. saw major reductions in their average total time by 88, 73 and 43 seconds respectively from 2022 to 2023.
• Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s each saw improvements to their average accuracy score by 9% and 8% respectively for the same time-period.
• Wendy’s and Taco Bell saw improvements of 8% and 7% respectively to their average rating for satisfaction with the level of service this year over last.

“We know that the brands included in the study are focused on quality, innovation and improving the guest experience, and it’s great to see these efforts reflected in the scores,” says Laura Livers, Head of Strategic Growth at Intouch Insight. “The industry is at a point where new innovations are being released continuously, so it’s critical for brands to keep monitoring how these changes are affecting performance and impacting the overall experience.”

Friendliness continues to be a factor that brands cannot ignore when it comes to drive-thru performance. Year after year, the study reveals the significant impacts that employee friendliness can have on all aspects of the drive-thru experience. This year’s data shows that orders with friendly service not only have an 84% higher satisfaction rating than without friendly service, but accuracy is 18% higher, and service time is 34 seconds faster with friendly service than without.

A new addition to the study this year is the inclusion of two Innovation Locations, Taco Bell Defy in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, and McDonald’s test restaurant located just outside Fort Worth Texas. In both cases, these locations outperformed not only their individual brand scores for service time by roughly one-minute each but beat the study average by one minute and 50 seconds, and 33 seconds respectively.

To download the full study, visit: https://www.intouchinsight.com/resources/studies/drive-thru-2023/  

About the Intouch Insight Annual Drive-Thru Study
The Annual Drive-Thru study is a time-based study that uses mystery shopping to capture industry performance benchmarks from ten of the leading quick-serve brands. Unlike traditional consumer surveys, this study relies on real-time, unannounced visits by mystery shoppers, thus capturing data on speed of service, accuracy, and the level of satisfaction with the experience.

About Intouch Insight
Intouch Insight specializing in helping multi-location businesses achieve operational excellence so they can exceed customer expectations, strengthen brand reputation, and improve financial performance.

Intouch enables brands to collect and centralize data from multiple customer touch points, giving them actionable, real-time insights in an advanced analytics platform. Founded in 1992, Intouch is trusted by over 300 of North America’s most-loved brands for their customer experience management, customer survey, mystery shopping, mobile forms, operational and compliance audits, geolocation data capture and event marketing automation solutions. For more information, visit www.intouchinsight.com.

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Media Contact:
Sarah Beckett
Director of Marketing
sbeckett@intouchinsight.com  
613-270-7922