PROBLEM
McDonald’s wanted to enhance the customer experience
In recent years, McDonald’s, a leader in the quick service restaurant space, has made significant advancements in technology on its mission to drive a more seamless and memorable customer experience.
Under its Accelerating the Arches growth strategy, the company has invested in digital, enhancing the McDonald’s Global Mobile App with Mobile Order & Pay, indoor and outdoor digital menu boards, and self-order kiosks.
A key component that needed further development to create a more seamless customer experience, however, was a layer of personalization.
In the U.S. Drive Thru menu and in-store kiosk displays, McDonald’s is able to show relevant menu items based on factors key to help provide an enhanced customer experience: time of day, current restaurant traffic and popularity.
As part of this work, Dynamic Yield collaborates with the McDonald’s team to regularly test different user experiences and machine learning algorithms and recommendation strategies. Ultimately, Dynamic Yield built intelligent deep learning-based algorithms specifically for McDonald’s based on a unique set of requirements and business needs. These allowed McDonald’s to better optimize ‘Recommended Items’ and ‘Suggestive Sell’ recommendations across digital menu boards and generate incremental average check size.
McDonald’s scaled its Drive-Thru personalization strategy globally
After successfully testing Dynamic Yield’s personalization and experience optimization solution in several U.S restaurants in 2018, McDonald’s became one of the first global restaurant brands to integrate AI-powered decision technology into its restaurants, and rolled out its personalized product recommendations in more than 12,000 McDonald’s Drive Thrus in the U.S. during a 6-month ramp up period.
Now, just a few years later, McDonald’s has scaled the deployment of Dynamic Yield in Drive Thrus and in-store kiosks across several global markets.
Today, recommendations served on a McDonald’s digital screen integrated with Dynamic Yield’s technology, whether within the Drive Thru or in-restaurant kiosk – is being A/B tested and regularly optimized against at least one other algorithm. Improving ordering experiences and ushering in a new era of digital engagement for the iconic brand is just the beginning, as McDonald’s plans to further scale and integrate Dynamic Yield’s capabilities globally.
Related customer stories
