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Learn how Applebee’s VP of consumer insights emphasizes stakeholder engagement and feedback strategies to enhance customer experience and drive business growth.
Photo by Yun Cho
Photo by Yun Cho
At the core of successful customer experience initiatives lies the nurturing and development of relationships with various stakeholders. Applebee’s VP of consumer insights, Jill Marchick, emphasizes the significance of ongoing conversations with stakeholders as a crucial lesson learned throughout her career. Marchick highlights the necessity to continuously engage all levels of the organization to foster a culture of feedback and improvement.
Applebee’s customer listening strategy revolves around the integration of feedback from franchisees, managers, customers, and associates. By actively involving key stakeholders in the feedback loop, the company ensures that data translates into actionable insights for all team members, from servers to corporate entities. The collaboration across different departments and franchisees guarantees a comprehensive approach to refining operational processes and enhancing customer satisfaction.
To capture diverse perspectives and relevant feedback, Applebee’s established a cross-functional committee comprising insights and analytics teams, operations personnel, and prominent franchisees. This inclusive approach enables all stakeholders to contribute to the feedback mechanism, ensuring that the data collected is utilized effectively to drive operational improvements and customer-centric decisions.
Photo by Yun Cho
Applebee’s places a strong emphasis on data dissemination to empower managers and associates in shaping restaurant-level operations. The development of comprehensive dashboards that incorporate feedback from multiple sources such as customer surveys, online reviews, and service calls facilitates informed decision-making at every operational level. By ensuring visibility and accessibility to relevant data, Applebee’s enables stakeholders to drive continuous improvements and uphold service standards.
Through meticulous survey design and implementation, Applebee’s leverages financial incentives and convenient feedback mechanisms to encourage customer engagement. By offering incentives like discounts and enabling on-table surveys using interactive tablets, the company enhances customer participation in providing valuable feedback. This proactive approach not only enriches the feedback pool but also drives incremental business by incentivizing customer responses.
Applebee’s commitment to addressing customer concerns promptly is exemplified by its approach to resolving issues reported through feedback surveys. By setting a 72-hour window for addressing low-rated experiences and providing customers the choice on follow-up communication, the company prioritizes customer satisfaction. This proactive resolution strategy not only enhances customer loyalty but also showcases Applebee’s dedication to continuous improvement.
