An interesting exchange this week at a local fast food restaurant pointed out the critical need to link marketing and sales in delivering a valued customer experience.

The exchange went down like this.  My daughter and I pulled into a drive through to get breakfast on the way to school.  Luckily, as we were pressed for time,  there was no in front of us.  There was also no on behind us.  We ordered and pulled forward to the window as directed.  There, I happily traded a pleasant ‘good morning’, paid with a bigger bill than the total and received the correct change.  Great experience so far.

What happened next bordered on bizarre.  The window attendant (probably called something like a ’sales portal customer advocate’ in the franchise handbook) asked me if I would pull forward and she would bring my food to me.  I asked ‘why’ because there was no one behind me.  The attendant told me that the food wasn’t ready and they had a 90-second timer on their window.  I respectfully declined to move (raising my daughter’s fear level to code red because ‘Dad, they’ll spit in our food’).

In due time – didn’t seem like more than 90 seconds – we received our food and headed down the road.  The impact of the exchange lingered, however, as I analyzed the bizarre chain of events.  The attendant was no doubt aware of a well-intentioned metric to drive customer satisfaction based on order turn times.  In the fast food business, completing orders fast is a good business strategy (so is serving food that hasn’t been under the heat lamps for hours).  The turn time metric was probably established by a joint committee with marketing providing competitive intelligence and operations working with the service (sales) side to implement strategically aligned business processes that would guarantee optimum customer satisfaction.  Which all sounds great until people get involved and have to implement the plan.

In my case, who knows why the food wasn’t ready.  Maybe the bacon cook called in sick.  Or maybe the kitchen folks needed to finish the text message they started when I pulled up (lol).  The window attendant was clearly on top of her game, calling a process audible and asking me to move forward. Or maybe the franchise owner directed it as a store policy because they got hammered recently for not meeting the window turn time metric (ignoring the obvious answer which is making sure food is ready). Regardless of how it happened, the process didn’t work as planned.  I didn’t get my food within the prescribed standard and being asked to move up didn’t add up to a very good customer experience.

Don’t get me wrong, delivering to high standards is hard.  It’s also a worthwhile endeavor.  Just make sure it’s real and authentic.  Tricking the system and hiding behind false data doesn’t do a thing to help a company grow a loyal base of customers.