DD+D's Byron and Jeff Pollard, Director Experience Design for McDonald's global team presented, "Showing Customers (and Employees) We Care" ,
at the 2012 Compete Through Service Symposium, at the Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix A.Z. this month.
For more info on this amazing Symposium - Center for Service Leadership at A.S.U W.P. Carey
The Presentation:"Showing Customers (and Employees) We Care"
McDonald’s Chief Restaurant Officer has a favorite saying, “It’s not real until it’s real in the restaurant.” The path to making service experience real at McDonald’s has had many twists and turns and is still in its early days as a formal practice. We’re excited to share how service culture has been cultivated over the years at McDonald’s and how we’ve employed tools from the disciplines of theater and design and are collaborating with innovators in the service design community to have a positive impact on our business. And it wouldn’t be “real” if we didn’t have an embodied employee persona performance thrown in for good measure!
Showing Customers (and Employees) We Care McDonald’s has worked hard to adopt a service innovation culture. They do this by utilizing a theatre of service design. They make service design real through brainstorming, modeling, and then simulation testing. They measure the value of service design changes and continue to move service design forward. With each new service design change, they get feedback from real employees on new innovations.
The Experience Design team started as three people in the customer experience division. The division utilizes a number of out-of-the-box methods to help employees continually improve the customer experience.
For example, employees go to an improv coach to learn different ways to greet the customer, give them their order, and generally interact with the customer.
Theatrical traditions are built upon sound principles and exercises that promote:
Empathy
Communication Engagement
Trust
Collaboration
Improvisation
The organization Dramatic Diversity + Design works with companies, including McDonald’s, on different aspects of the customer service experience: Design Empathy – What barriers do the designers have? How do we break through them? Bodystorming/Design Improvement – Try things out, see how they feel. Personas – Bringing customers and their everyday ‘data’ to life, rather than just on a piece of paper. Performance Testing – Does the product/service work the way we imagined it would? Making Products Considerate – what characteristics do we want this product to have? With these tools, McDonald’s designers and employees can ensure that they are delivering the very best customer service experience possible. For more information about Dramatic Diversity + Design, visit: http://www.ddplusd.com
The video below "Working Together" is an example of what we're helping McDonald's (US and Global teams ) work toward.
A great customer and Employee experience!
