It’s been said that the Chick-fil-A original chicken sandwich is the pinnacle of human achievement. Well, maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but we have to agree they serve a delicious sandwich! Like all fast food restaurants, Chick-fil-A has to do more than provide good tasting food. Other core elements they have to get right include making food fast, making it easy, and making consumers feel good about the experience.
So how are they doing? We decided to find out by conducting a Voice of Customer data analysis using the Signals platform, assessing customer feedback using the built-in Yelp and Facebook data connectors. We analyzed over 14,000 comments, from over 8,000 consumers, over the past 9 years. We were interested in the overall sentiment, as well as the specific things consumers had to say, geographic influence, and trends over time.
The most common themes in the data were:
- Chick-fil-A products and service
- Sunday (not being open)
- Competitors
Let’s dig into each of these to hear the Voice of Customer.
Products and Service Details
As the chart above indicates, the volume of consumer feedback has grown quickly, and is showing no signs of slowing down. There is a spike in the data in July 2012, and as many readers recall, that was when Chick-fil-A was in the news on the issue of gay marriage. While the company’s views resulted in negative reviews, the outstanding drive thru service and waffle fries offset the negatives.
Top Influencers
Looking at the top influencers, we found that five users provided more than 18 comments each. These comments were positive to neutral. Chick-fil-A may want to examine these top influencers more thoroughly. With this volume of postings, the consumers could have experiences with many Chick-fil-A restaurants, or be professional bloggers/reviewers. We also found that Chick-fil-A customers felt strongly positive about the customer service at the chain’s locations. Politeness in the drive-thru is an example, where employees end a conversation by saying “My pleasure.”
Geographic Differences
The geographic heat maps show the blue positive comments are prevalent in the East and South, but sporadic in the West. The neutral gray comments are in similar areas, except some areas in the West. We ran an analysis of negative comments, but there were not enough to show up on the heat maps. Based on the customer feedback, Chick-fil-A could look into expanding more in the West. They have not saturated this market as well, and there is positive feedback and response to their products.
What Customers are Saying
We looked into the categories of customer comments, and the key buzzword phrases. The blue coloring indicates a positive sentiment with few exceptions. Specific products were identified, including Waffle Fry, which was mentioned in almost every category. Consumers love the Chick-fil-A waffle fries! Maintaining the quality of this product is very important, and can be used as a selling point in differentiating from competitors. Speaking of competitors, many comments compared Chick-fil-A to competitors including McDonalds, KFC, and Burger King. By clicking on each of these competitor mentions, you can see what the consumers are saying about each one.
Day of Week
The second most common term is “Sunday”. Digging a little deeper into that buzzword we found that the term “Sunday” is often mentioned with things like “craving”, “Drive Thru”, and some competitors (who are open on Sundays, unlike Chick-fil-A). The comments indicate that customers often crave Chick-Fil-A on Sundays and want the convenience of a drive-thru. Consumers have to look to competitors since Chick-Fil-A is closed. To combat this, the company can capitalize on the popularity of Waffle Fries and offer a special deal for them on Monday or Saturday to incentivize consumers.
A summary of the data analysis:
- Customer feedback is growing with no signs of slowing down. This steady feedback stream from customers indicates that Chick-fil-A will want to run data analysis on a frequent basis, weekly if not daily. The faster they can spot trends or changes the better for their business.
- Customers of Chick-fil-A also visit competitors, so there is an opportunity to use data analytics as a competitor analysis tool (see related blog post: Painting the Competition Picture).
- The data analytics highlighted the importance of the product quality (waffle fries and chicken sandwiches), drive-thru convenience, and customer service. These core product attributes are so positive that they overwhelmed the negative comments about the company’s political viewpoints, and the negative comments about not being open on Sundays.
- The geographic heat map showed the strength of Chick-fil-A in most of the country, and an opportunity to expand to areas with less presence.
- User comments showed a small group of top influencers, and allowed the analyst to see why customers were talking about various issues, and why they felt the way they did.
This type of data analysis would have a taken a very long time to perform manually, and keeping up with it on a regular basis would be difficult and costly. However, Signals made it easy, and fast. The built-in data connectors to Yelp and Facebook pulled the data in minutes, and presented it in an interactive visual display. The ability to run ad-hoc jobs in Signals on any data source, simply by uploading a csv or Excel file, is a real plus. You do not have to be a data scientist to use a tool like this; any front line employee can use it.
If you would like to try Signals to hear the Voice of Customer on your products, or to check on competitors, contact us at clientsupport@stratifyd.com. We’d love to work with you!
