What is missing from the mobile order pickup experience, according to customersWhat is missing from the mobile order pickup experience, according to customers

While mobile order pickup continues to gain popularity as a foodservice channel, the customer experience is not quite perfect yet. According to a mystery shopper study of 1,752 QSR app users from ages 18-75, released by market research firm, Ipsos, in partnership with Nation’s Restaurant News, there are several opportunities in payment options, loyalty, and order customization that operators can improve.

For example, only 55% of the 26 quick-service and fast-casual chains in the study allow customers to always see a running total when building their order on the mobile app. Additionally, less than two-thirds of the brands let customers pay with gift cards, and only 5% offer the option of paying at pickup.

“There were a number of app functionalities that were present across most brands’ digital offering and there were some that were more hit or miss,” said Brad Christian, head of strategic growth, US channel performance, for Ipsos. “How you pay and the ability to save payment details within the app was one of those areas where the traditional QSR brands performed very well. And this is important as we found that saving payment information was a top driver of intent to use in the future, which certainly helps for a faster check out process.” 

Related:Tech Tracker: Can technology fix mobile pickup chaos at coffee and salad chains?

Although most customers (74%) found order customization easy to navigate, less than half of brands allowed customers to specify a specific amount of an ingredient, and only 15% of brands provided a text box for special written instructions for their orders.

This gap in mobile app functionality extended to digital rewards too: less than two-thirds of brands in the study let rewards customers earn benefits via mobile order pickup, and 20% of customers said it was unclear whether they received points with an order.

While payment, order customization, and loyalty opportunities were hit and miss, the customer pickup experience was a little more reliable, according to the Ipsos study. Across the board, 72% of customers found that their food items were ready in a bag, with only 5% of customers needing to ask an employee for assistance. However, only 35% of customers found that their order was ready waiting for them right when they arrived.

When it comes to order accuracy, the customer experience scores were better, with 94% of customers saying their order was accurate and 84% saying that the order pickup time was correctly estimated (with an average wait of 9.7 minutes from when they submitted an order). Additionally, 94% said that their order temperature was correct and 84% said the main entree was cooked properly.

Related:Study: Ordering ahead pervasive among all generations

“Our study focused on picking up the food or beverage order in-store rather than the drive thru or delivery so we could assess how brands are meeting customer expectations there,” Christian said. “What we found was that many brands are still developing a consistent approach for order pick up within their stores.”

When diving into the results of this study by foodservice category, coffee and beverage brands were winners across many of the categories. Unsurprisingly, coffee and beverage brands offered the most order customization options and benefits earned through mobile pickup orders and offered the clearest pickup processes (customers were twice as likely to have their order ready for them when they picked up than the average experience).

“As you might expect, the coffee/beverage brands that we studied excelled in beverage customization offers,” Christian said. “In fact, they performed meaningfully better on this dimension of the in-app experience than either of the other segments.”

Coffee and beverage customers also received their orders the fastest, as compared with the burger, chicken, and other types of food brands, with an average wait time of 8.6 minutes from order submission. However, when it comes to quality of the food and beverages, coffee chains saw much more mixed results. Only 58% of coffee and beverage orders were securely wrapped or packaged, and the category came in last across food quality scores. Ipsos said some of the lower scores on food quality and temperature could be because many of the items are pre-prepared.  

Despite these objective wins for the beverage category, subjectively, customers in the “other” category (comprised of salads, bowls, and pizza chains) had the highest satisfaction rate of 71%, with 72% of guests saying they’d be most likely to order via the mobile pickup channel again.

This is part two of NRN’s coverage of the Ipsos digital ordering performance study results. For part one, click here. Next, we will dive deeper into individual brand data, and why the top ranked brands performed so well with mobile ordering users.