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Customer Journey Research & Mapping for a National Restaurant Chain

The Challenge

An international Restaurant Chain was looking to extend their leadership role with their customers and develop a deeper understanding of customer journeys in order to learn: 

  • What are the key “moments that matter” to customers?
  • Where do they occur across, and which moments matter the most?
  • Where are the friction points in the journey, and how can they be resolved, addresses or minimized?
  • Who in the industry is doing this well that this client could learn from?
  • Understand motivation/barriers to using digital in relevant parts of the journey
  • What is the business impact of delivering a friction-free, digitally-enabled journey?
  • What untapped “10X” opportunities exist for small incremental changes that can significantly impact the business, and how can they be leveraged by this client?

The Solution

We proposed a robust research effort that included intensive workshops with the client’s cross functional teams to carefully evaluate three critical factors: Shopper segments, Channels (In-Restaurant, Delivery, Pickup) and Ordering Methods (In-Person, Over the Phone, Mobile and Drive-Thru). 

Key Path to Purchase shopper journey steps that were to be studied included:

  • Trigger – what is the catalyst that begins a journey to the client’s restaurants
  • Pre-order awareness and brand consideration
  • Channel and ordering selection
  • In-cafe experience
  • Travel to / from café
  • In-home experience, including referral and issue resolution

Based on these segments, channels and ordering methods, four research approaches were proposed:

  • In-cafe qualitative shop-along research – with shopper segments in café dining and takeout
  • “In-the-moment” mobile ethnographic qualitative research – with shopper segments for delivery and pickup
  • Post-purchase quantitative online survey for reflective assessments of customer experiences
  • “Real-time” customer behavioral research leveraging video graphic observation, eye-tracking and biometrics to understand customer behavior

Finally, post completion of the research, four key deliverables were provided:

  • Restaurant experience/journey research report & findings
  • Delivery & Pickup experience/journey research report & findings
  • Path-to-Purchase journey maps for each category + differentiated segment/channel as noted
  • Overall research report and customer journey improvement recommendations

 This project was executed over a 15-week period.

The Results

This research yielded three key components critical to a game-changing strategy for this national restaurant chain:

  1. End-to-end journey insights that enabled this client to understand the pain points, triggers, moments-of-truth and decision points that customers encounter throughout their buying journeys.
  1. In-restaurant and out-of-restaurant qualitative and quantitative analytics that provided both the insights and necessary quantification on key journey elements for diner segments in each channel as well as illuminated “latent” behavior-based segmentation possibilities necessary for a game-changing delivery approach.
  1. Multiple customized journey maps, by segment and channel, with each containing:
  • Voice-of-the-Customer verbatims that represented the sentiment of that segment of shoppers
  • Purchase and Brand selection triggers that initiate customer path-to-purchase
  • Pain points in the current journey that need addressing
  • Key leverage points / “Moments of Truth” / inflection points that drive customer purchase decisions, loyalty and advocacy
  • Key factoids that provide specific data critical to decision-making and differentiation across segments and channels
  • Key insights, imagery and analysis from behavioral research

Awarded by Feedspot

Contact Us

1-800-549-7170

GoldResearch, Inc.

8000 I.H. 10 West | Suite 600
San Antonio, Texas, 78230

Watch Nyika Allen, C.M. Allen, Director of Aviation, City of Albuquerque, share her experience working with Gold Research, Inc in evaluating customer journeys.