McDonald's Customer Service Costing Company Profits
Customer service complaints have increased at McDonald's over the past year, potentially hurting the company's profits, reports state.
McDonald's higher ups are looking into customer complaint issues after the number of complaints that the company receives has increased over the past year. The no.1 complaint, according to a webcast McDonald's executives held with franchise owners last month, was poor customer service.
The report stated that 1 in 5 customer complaints over the past year at McDonald's were related to poor customer service, a slide in the webcast obtained by the Wall Street Journal reported. A second slide said complaints "have increased significantly over the past six months."
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The presentation was in response to two consecutive quarters in which McDonald's has missed Wall Street's earnings expectations.
"The new leadership has decided to focus on customer satisfaction as a real driver for us to build the brand and build sales," one franchisee told WSJ.
The attempt to improve customer service comes just a few weeks after New York workers in the fast food service industry held a strike to raise concern for low wages. At current, the median pay for the nearly 50,000 fast food workers in New York City is $9 an hour, or just over $18,500 a year, according to the New York Labor Department. Minimum wage in New York is $7.25 an hour.
Workers have complained about hard labor and few benefits.
"You don't have a life when you get paid this little. My body is breaking down," Scott, who works 25 hours a week delivering pizza in addition to two other jobs, told CNN Money. "And with no benefits, we can't afford to get sick."
Organized by a coalition of labor, community and clergy groups called Fast Food Forward, the workers stepped out of their jobs at the beginning of April in a 1-day strike to raise awareness for their cause.
"The group is asking employers to pay workers a minimum of $15 an hour, and for the right to organize without retaliation and intimidation," according to CNN.
