When it comes to burgers, everyone can become a food enthusiast, right? Think of the number of instances the burger comparison conversation happens each time a group of friends or family members visit a burger joint. Knowing those conversations happen, restaurant chains want to dig a bit deeper into them.
Shake Shack, known for its burgers made from 100% all-natural Angus beef (as well as hot dogs, crinkle-cut fries and a range of milkshakes made with real sugar and hormone-free milk all wrapped in environmentally friendly packaging), is not excluded from that list.
The fast-casual restaurant chain wants to find out what customers say about its food and how their burgers compare to competitors, such as the restaurant chain surrounded by palm trees that gets you in and out as well as the chain known for its Texas-sized orange and white stripes.
Traditionally, Shake Shack's leadership relied on their background in fine dining and intuition to make decisions regarding their products, brand and business. However, as the company expanded, they recognized the importance of analyzing feedback from guests and testing their internal direction. With challenges rising in the market (such as the impact of inflation and shifts in guest behavior), Shake Shack realized the necessity of implementing new tools to assist their marketing team in effectively comprehending and conveying the value of the Shake Shack product in each of their core markets.
Looking to shake up its methods, Shake Shack chose Qualtrics XM for Customer Frontlines and BrandXM to quantitatively evaluate its brand strength against competitors, identify areas of opportunity and growth domestically and connect more deeply with its core guests.
Qualtrics Customer Frontlines is a customer experience management platform that is designed to help businesses listen to and act on customer feedback. The platform allows companies to collect feedback from customers through various channels, such as email, web surveys, social media and mobile apps. Qualtrics then analyzes the feedback using advanced text analytics, sentiment analysis and machine learning algorithms to provide businesses with actionable insights.
Qualtrics BrandXM, on the other hand, is a brand experience management platform that helps businesses understand and improve their brand perception among their target audience. It enables businesses to collect feedback, analyze data and take action to improve the customer experience, brand loyalty and overall brand health.
Qualtrics BrandXM allows Shake Shack to capture data from every touchpoint that matters and understand which ones have the most impact on its brand’s health. For instance, the company learned that Texans prefer to know that Shake Shack food is 100% Angus beef, while Californians want to know that the company does not use antibiotics or hormones in any of its meat
With insights from Qualtrics BrandXM, Shake Shack also found that new guests with a positive first visit to Shake Shack have a higher likelihood of returning in the following six months compared to those who had a negative experience. Shake Shack also saw an increase in guest awareness of Shake Shack’s brand pillars, which are high-quality ingredients, making fresh products in-house and an emphasis on a feel-good experience. Using BrandXM, Shake Shack links these brand metrics to the business KPIs like revenue and loyalty and sees the actions it needs to take to grow its brand.
“The Qualtrics BrandXM and XM for Customer Frontlines platforms allow for quick, scalable analysis that can be easily shared across our organization to make fast decisions and support the intuition that has underpinned our success to date,” said Charles Frankievich, Director, Consumer Insights and Analytics at Shake Shack. “We can share insights across our ops, finance, culinary and tech teams to more deeply understand what people love about our food and ensure that our guest experience in stores and over digital channels like our app and website meets and exceeds their expectations.”
As Shake Shack continues to expand, using Qualtrics allows the chain to better understand how its product, brand and guest perception is performing in its non-home markets.
Edited by
Alex Passett
