McDonald’s customer service: An executive with McDonald’s said recently that customer service at its locations is “broke,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Steve Levigne, vice president of business research for McDonald’s USA, presented slides during a webcast with franchise owners showing that customer complaints are “increasing” and noted there’s more and more “rude or unprofessional employees,” according to the paper in a report this week.
Complaints said service complaints “have increased significantly over the past six months,” one slide said.
But one franchise, which was not identified, told the Journal that it is working to curb the problem.
“The new leadership has decided to focus on customer satisfaction as a real driver for us to build the brand and build sales,” the franchise said.
The company also came up with a new position called the “runner” to hand out sauce packets and cups to customers.
However, the company did not confirm the information laid out in the webcast to NBC News.
“We are not in a position to confirm or deny this as we believe the original story was based on leaked information,” a McDonald’s spokeswoman told NBC News. “As such we do not comment on leaked information or information we believe is obtained through unauthorized means.”
Daniel Gross, an editor with the Daily Beast, said on Twitter that the Journal report never raised the issue of low pay as a contributing factor to poor customer service.
“Astonishing. In big [Wall Street Journal] article about service/friendliness problems at mcdonalds, no mention of chronically low pay as a factor,” he wrote.
But the Journal report did mention that high employee turnover could be a factor in the alleged diminishing customer service.
