Introduction
Quality management is an organizational approach to understanding customer needs and providing accurate solutions within the confines of the organization’s budget, at the right time, and with minimum loss (Howard, Rosa, and Alan 2004).
McDonald’s Restaurants is a fast-food restaurant that offers its services to many locations around the world through its franchises. The services offered are a self-service system and drive-through. The products are hamburgers, breakfast, chicken sandwiches and products, restrooms, desserts, soft drinks, and French fries. It also offers vegetarian items and salads (Chester 2009).
Customer Benefit Package (CBP)
Customer Benefit Package (CBP) refers to the different combinations of intangibles and tangibles that make up a service. CBP is a tool that defines the nonphysical and physical goods of a service (Zemke 2009). McDonald’s CBP comprises of the following:
Tangibles
Tangibles are those physical characteristics that make up a product or a service. There are many objects associated with services and these things are called tangibles. This makes up one side of the Customer Service Package.
Technology
Technology is essential for the success of McDonald’s Restaurant. It has embraced the use of technology to offer first-class service to its customers.
- It uses a computerized point-of-sale system that tracks a huge amount of data;
- It uses touch-screen computers at its counters for ease of ordering by customers,
- It uses mobile POS devices and customer order centers (Omar 2009).
- The restaurant also uses electronic card payment, and this has significantly reduced the time necessary to provide a customer with service.
- McDonald’s Restaurant has also introduced a new technology called AUTOBag, which has improved the delivery of orders after taking them (Thompson 2007).
Employee
McDonald’s Restaurant employees are well-groomed in whichever store they are operating. They wear white shirts, a hat, and black pants that make them presentable. Jeans and sweaters are not part of the dress code of McDonald’s Restaurant. Women are allowed to wear make-up as long as they do not overdo it. Perfume is not allowed since it may affect the customers. Women’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail, or it has to be above the collar of the shirt. Most of the employees are young since they are fast learners and they are technologically informed (Royle 2000).
Package
The packages at McDonald’s Restaurant are top-notch. They have packages that are appealing to customers, decorated in different colors. The packages are of different sizes from medium to large. They have birthday party packages, kid’s party packages, wedding packages and all these are designed to meet the various needs of its customers.
The tables have more than one server responsible for it; they have classic menus that are appealing to customers with quality ingredients prepared by highly trained and talented chefs. They have quality food treated with respect, small portions, and large portions of food. They have good-tasting food, and they offer take-away packages (Sondra & Kurt 2008).
Facilities
There is access to free WI-FI in McDonald’s restaurants, free and ample parking spaces for customers as they eat, attractive signs are indicating McDonald’s restaurants, which are broadly fixed at the building they operate at, they have spacious restrooms with television sets. The restaurants are large enough to hold meetings and conferences for corporate. There is good security in and around the restaurants, which assures customers of their security. Most of the restaurants have twenty-four hours surveillance cameras to monitor all the movements (Lambert 2003).
Intangible
It is not easy to identify the intangibles because you cannot touch or see them; it is just some aspect that attributes to the service. The vision of McDonald’s states that it wants to be the best quick-service restaurant by providing quality service, cleanliness, and value to make all the customers happy. The use of modern technology has enabled McDonald’s to offer its customers convenient and timely services. McDonald’s restaurants are found almost on every street of town and this makes it convenient for customers to make their purchases. It offers ordering services through the internet and most of the restaurants have telephone numbers where customers can call and make orders or request for delivery. McDonald’s restaurants also offer outside catering services to get closer to their customers. MacDonald’s ensures that its employees offer high-quality services to customers without compromising their needs. Training of employees on customer care is paramount and this ensures effective handling of customers. The efficiency of the staff is high when handling customer orders. The reliability of the services offered is also very important in creating and maintaining customer confidence. The company has a good reputation due to its goodwill created after long years in service (Foster 2009).
Interview questions with a McDonald’s manager
- How does McDonald’s define CBP?
- What are the products and services offered at McDonald’s restaurant?
- How has McDonald’s used technological innovations to do business?
- Do you use customer feedback to enhance service delivery? If, so how?
- Have you ever contacted customers based on the feedback they gave you on the services you had offered?
- Who implements and uses the customer’s comments?
- What is the goal of your store?
- Are you planning to open more stores to offer your services?
- What is the level of competition and challenge in the restaurant industry?
- What are you doing to counter the competition and retain your customers?
Works Cited
Chester, Tom. Restaurant Business. Chicago: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print.
Foster, S. Thomas. Managing Quality: Integrating the Supply Chain. New York: Prentice-Hall, 2009. Print.
Howard S. Gitlow, Rosa Oppenheim, Alan Oppenheim,. Quality Management. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2004. Print.
Lambert, Tiffany. Restaurant Promotion and Publicity: For Just a Few Dollars a Day. New York: Atlantic Publishing Compan, 2003. Print.
Omar, Jlahman. “Research Post: Technology Important to McDonald’s.” 2009. Studentwebstuff. Web.
Royle, Tony. Working for McDonald’s in Europe: The Unequal Struggle. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Sondra J. Dahmer, Kurt W. Kahl. Restaurant Service Basics. London: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Print.
Thompson, Gery. “McD Information system.” 2007. McDonald Information System. Web.
Zemke, Ron. Best Practices in Customer Service. Chicago: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, 2009. Print.