Digital ordering from smartphones and the web is becoming more established, and could provide KFC with an
important new sales channel. Technology has always played an important role in KFC’s strategy of achieving
operational excellence. Adding a digital ordering solution to our restaurants will provide our customers with a faster, more consistent way to order more and more often from KFC. The introduction of an on-line and mobile ordering platform has significant initial expense as well as an upkeep cost, however, this is the preferred method of ordering for many customers and will pay back versus the cost of call center assets and operatives. It is highly recommended to have this option as with advent of smartphones and related technology, more and more customers prefer this mode versus typical methods of placing the order.
Please click on the link below to watch the video playback on introduction of digital ordering
Digital Ordering
Key business drivers for adding digital ordering include:
Increased relevance to our consumers
Decrease in Product Availability issues that exist today
Desire to develop relationships with our customers
Goals and objectives of digital ordering platform
Select and deploy a digital ordering system that:
Provides our customers with a best in class digital and mobile ordering solution.
Provides our restaurants with a financially viable model for digital and mobile ordering.
Provides the company with a platform for future digital growth in the areas of loyalty, payment and CRM.
Drives incremental transactions and ticket average
Benefits of digital ordering platform
Call center/Labor savings
Order is conducted at customer’s own pace, leading to less rushed ordering and higher transaction value
Online channel average ticket increase of 10-15%
Average incremental transactions of 5+%
New transactions as well as migrated phone orders are cheaper to service
Increase customer satisfaction & loyalty
Digital Ordering
Extend the Brand
Increase Store Level Marketing
Enables personalization - online customer account tracks purchases, provides detailed transaction history and basket analysis, enables targeted up-sell and recurring loyalty programmes
In emerging markets, the online mix is usually lower initially. The initial focus should be to try and beat competition or at least match.
As much as it is important to have digital ordering platform, it is equally important to have the right flow of the website and the mobile application.
Sample journey for an online/mobile order
Customer orders their meal via a website, mobile website or mobile app, completes the payment via credit card or cash on delivery. And the order gets relayed to the specific store, is packed and delivered to the customer.
Typical online customer flow is as follows:
Find a store
Select occasion and location
Select products
Checkout
Post Checkout
Digital Ordering
Step 1 : Find a Store
Importance of search: Internet search traffic can be critical part of our business. Better optimized pages will result in more traffic to site. Also it's easy to assume that by having good search rankings, lots of people will find for our website and become customers. We need to test this thinking and make sure we're not just being optimistic. Who exactly is the type of person you expect to attract? Imagine them as a single real person, sitting at a computer. Why will this person use the internet to find your product? What will they expect to find? If they do find your website, will they buy from you or will they just use you for information and buy somewhere else? In most cases good search engine results will benefit you, but it pays to be realistic about how significant the benefit will be. Further it is important to monitor the traffic and conversion pattern on a monthly basis to understand if it is working in the right direction.
Understanding how search works: Search engines are large databases created by ‘spidering’ the Web using search engine robots. These robots are small pieces of software that follow links on the Web and record the content found at each URL. All this content is then built into an index and made searchable by keyphrase or other quality. As there are typically many millions of Web sites, pictures, or other types of content that may be relevant for a typical user query, search engines spend most of their time creating scalable ways of ranking and ordering sites in ways that users find helpful. Search engine optimization (SEO) seeks to re-structure web content to make it rank better relative to competitors.
Ideas to improve capabilities:
Bidding & paying to be No.1: Bid and pay more per click than the competitor to be on top of search results. But it is an expensive proposition and may not go with viable. Improving Quality Score is an
effective way to raise ad position, while controlling costs.
Digital Ordering
Improving Quality Scores : Inorder to improve the quality score as mentioned above, Search Engine Optimization pages and ‘how the text is indexed’ plays a major role :
Prioritize Key SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Pages – Have branded homepage, Product and Deal Pages and store landing pages for queries with a local or geographical component
Indexability – If text is stored as an image, it cannot be indexed. The website should have alternate text specified or have system text underneath images so that it can be listed when the key words are being looked for
Improving search results:
Get Listed
Register ALL stores for big 3 engines - google.com/placesforbusiness, listings.local.yahoo.com, ssl.bing.com/listings
Be as robust as possible - include pictures, hours of operation, videos, phone number, etc…
Claim the listings as an owner - verified listings are more relevant
Optimize pages for local information - create store landing pages to include city, state in title tag, include physical address and make sure they link back to ordering site
Collaborate – register with local directory services for easy search. Encourage reviews confirmation page or incentivize and reviews are very important for algorithm and search optimization
Digital Ordering
Click on the link below to get more details on search optimization
When the phone orders are taken, order takers typically ask 1 thing after greeting - “Will this be for delivery or take away”. And if the order is out of order taking zone, no order taking intent is there.
The online flow should be exactly similar, although the menus, prices, and offers may vary from store to store.
Another point to be noted is that while carryout part can be generic, but delivery part on the ordering platform requires precision.
For Carryout - a customer can be given a generic option of entering the location and then the website or
app recommends the store.
For Delivery – the customer has to enter the precise location including the apartment, street address and the postal code.
Digitized Trade Areas is highly recommended
Matching customers to trade zones is biggest obstacle for certain markets
Lack of static address components
Call center process labor intensive
Opportunity to leverage digital assets to solve
Leverage Google, Bing, or any online mapping service
Must have current digitized trade area map
Digital Ordering
Leverage Google, Bing, or any online mapping service
Must have current digitized trade area map
Key Learning
Occasion is critical to the shopping flow
Offer different paths
Ask only for necessary information
Potential to use digital mapping process to improve - US PH locations issues dropped 99%
Step 3: Adding Product
Adding a product should be easy and fast. Minimize long scrolling on the page as short pages convert better while surfing on mobile than long pages also do not become a turn off to the user
Consider product categories
The fewer the product category, the better it is
Easier for a customer to navigate through the products
Easier to find the product customer wants
Increasing Guest Check:
Upsell/Cross-sell at right places on the app/ website is very effective in generating higher Guest Check
Conditional logic can result in bigger gains - US PH saw 1.5% gain of SSSG in online tickets
Digital Ordering
Click on the link below to get more details on how to optimize and leverage suggestive selling flow
Every 2 seconds of load time = 8% abandonment rate
Consider Gomez to monitor performance of key pages/processes
Can leverage Yum! scale to monitor
Digital Ordering
Test on popular browsers
Track browser popularity in your market
Test for top 2-3
Mobile Opportunities
Restaurant category is leading in mobile apps and sites. 30% restaurant searches done on Google are done on mobile and it spikes up on special occasions – e.d spiked up to 62% on Valentines Day in US
Apple App Store Opportunity
Currently at least 5 markets have apps available in the app store
Request to publish only in Country Market - Align with host country if need to publish in different app
store
Improve App Ratings - Ask users to rate app after order confirmation. It has higher likelihood of positive experience
Lessons Learned
Mobile and restaurants go together
Prioritize mobile website ASAP
Apps average ~ 8% (of digital)
Mobile website – 25% (of digital)
Digital Ordering
Other Implementation considerations
Integrated payment via web or mobile app
Customer data from mobile ordering should be usable via any central CRM plaforms that your market
adopts
Review maturity of market, in regards to readiness to adopt mobile payment. Consider what other business are doing (not necessarily in QSR space) – How confident are consumers to purchase items on-line?
Form a strong business partnership with key stakeholder departments including IT, operations, marketing and development
When planning factor in multiple iterations and tests to get website and mobile app right before rollout.
Ensure that website is responsive i.e should be mobile/ tablet enabled
Finding and approving a vendor:
In order to facilitate digital ordering by our customers, we need to explore potential third-party solutions. Kindly note that any digital ordering solution must provide a method to integrate with existing POS systems, injecting orders and payments plus retrieving menu and pricing data for display to the consumer. It is equally important to ensure that correct brief is given to the vendor on functional and technical requirements so that not only the product is robust, but also the consumer has a great experience while placing order on our portal. The vendor should be experienced and should be able to understand our requirement, develop the digital ordering platform, test, implement and manage it without any issues
KFC U.S. has developed “Request for Proposal” document that is very comprehensive and covers all aspects of
digital ordering platform. This document can be used to define the scope of work for the vendor.
Digital Ordering
Click on the link below to download “Request for Proposal” document and website security documents
Mobile application: The example below is of mobile app for carry-out and in-store, but is a very good reference to how the app should flow KFC Australia : KFC Australia 1 KFC Australia 2
Yum team has developed a responsive online ordering journey for KFC that is currently being implemented in Canada, Thailand and MENA. click link will allow you to get a feel for it. Try it from your desktop as well as your mobile and you will see how it adapts to your device.
