Transforming Our Customer Experience

A Message from Chris K: 

This note was originally sent as an email on July 26, 2021 to McDonald's Owner/Operators, company employees and suppliers worldwide.

Global McFamily,

Our very first value is, “We put our customers and people first.”  At the heart of McDonald’s is the experience we offer, and for 65 years we’ve created indelible experiences for billions of people around the world. Along the way, we’ve always focused on following our customers’ needs, finding the most convenient and engaging ways for them to enjoy McDonald’s.

At our founding, the restaurant experience was relatively simple: customers would walk up to the front counter, place their order, and get hot, delicious food served to them quickly. Then, in the early 1970s, McDonald’s pioneered the Drive Thru as a new service channel for customers.

In the last few years, we’ve added even more service channels, with delivery, curbside pick-up, kiosks and table service. At the heart of each of these innovations was our Global Mobile App (GMA), which has evolved our customer experience from the physical world to the digital world.

As this evolution continues, MyMcDonald’s and the GMA will become even more important to serving, interacting with, and delighting our customers around the world, and the insights generated from these platforms will help us further improve their experience. Our marketing power and scale will continue to be critical throughout this journey, turning the various customer touchpoints into a holistic and compelling Brand experience.

This vision was the inspiration for the Digital Customer Engagement team, led by Lucy Brady, and Data Analytics team, led by Craig Brabec, which we created over the last couple of years. Lucy, Craig, and their teams, working closely with Daniel Henry and the Global Technology organization, and Piotr Jucha and the Global Restaurant Development and Restaurant Solutions teams, have made tremendous progress.  We have over 40 million active app users in just our top six markets and millions more around the world. Over the past four years, we went from just over 3,000 restaurants offering delivery to now more than 30,000 restaurants. And we’re in the midst of deploying loyalty to our top six markets by the end of 2022, with the rest of the world to follow soon thereafter. As we’ve evolved the experience, we’ve brought customers along on our journey through exciting and impactful marketing, led by Alistair Macrow and the Global Marketing team.

But our aspirations are even higher, and to reach these goals, it’s clear to me that we need to create a more frictionless customer experience across all of our service channels. Our customers should be able to move seamlessly between the in-store, takeaway and delivery service channels so that we offer even more convenience and better personalization.

As I thought about this future, I concluded that we needed to remove some internal barriers and silos that ultimately lead to a fragmented customer experience. If we put our customers first, then our organization structure needs to reflect the customer experience we want to provide – not the other way around.

That’s why today I am announcing the creation of a new Customer Experience team, bringing together the Corporate teams central to our “M-C-D” growth pillars - Global Marketing, Global Restaurant Development and Restaurant Solutions, Data Analytics, and Digital Customer Engagement.

To lead this new team, I’m pleased to share the appointment of Manu Steijaert as EVP, Chief Customer Officer effective August 1. Manu will report directly to me and will join my Senior Leadership Team with oversight for the end-to-end customer experience. Reporting into Manu will be Craig Brabec, VP and Chief Data Analytics Officer; Lucy Brady, SVP and Chief Digital Customer Engagement Officer; Piotr Jucha, SVP, Global Restaurant Development and Restaurant Solutions Group; and Alistair Macrow, SVP and Global Chief Marketing Officer.

Manu is the ideal choice to take on this new role. He has been a part of the McDonald’s System for more than 20 years - most recently leading our International Operated Markets (IOM) Business Unit - and he has an incredibly deep understanding of the needs of our customers.

Manu’s first McDonald’s restaurant experience dates back to 1987, when he started working as a crew member at his parents’ restaurants in Belgium. Having held leadership roles in multiple McDonald’s markets since then, his global lens will be critical for this role.

Manu will relocate to Chicago with his wife and two children. Ian Borden will provide an update on the IOM BU leadership transition in the coming weeks.

Please join me in congratulating Manu on his promotion. Thank you all for the tremendous work that is continuing to expedite our growth.