McDonald’s has established a new CX team that will bring together four departments to provide a greater focus on customers following the COVID-19 pandemic.
A company email reads that the new team will be tasked with executing the growth pillars from the chain’s Accelerating the Arches initiative.
These include global marketing, global restaurant development and restaurant solutions, data analytics and digital customer engagement.
Manu Steijaert will lead the new team and will report directly to CEO Chris Kempczinski.
The news comes after the pandemic changed the face of CX over the past 16 months, with a greater focus on digital-first.
It shut down dining rooms and accelerated online habits, Forbes reports, with the company’s digital sales now expected to reach 20% this year alone.
This abrupt shift to digital perhaps makes CX harder to perfect. According to new research from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, companies now need to ensure that the online customer experience is “just as carefully designed as the in-person one … COVID has forever changed the customer experience”, it reads.
Delivery is now available at 30,000 of its restaurants, while curbside has grown by double digits in the last year to become a major access point for much of the industry, including McDonald’s.
Kempczinski said during the company’s Q1 call in April: “We’re doubling down on digital, delivery and drive-thru. We’re creating a faster, easier, better customer experience.
"However our customers want to interact with us, whether at the counter, through the drive-thru window or on the app, dining in the restaurant or having that meal delivered to them, we will offer experiences they love and what we believe will keep them coming back.”
