Name: GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO WOW YOUR CUSTOMER
Uploaded: 2025-06-10
Duration: 18 min 31 s

For mega consumer brands like McDonald's and Levi’s, customer satisfaction isn’t just a goal— it's a business imperative. In this session, Mason Smoot will reveal McDonald's secret sauce for  digital transformation, from AI-powered drive-thrus to next-gen restaurant innovation.   Jason Gowans will dive into Levi’s data and tech-driven approach to winning customers through personalization that fuels lasting loyalty to one of America’s most iconic brands.

GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT: LEVERAGING TECHNOLOGY TO WOW YOUR CUSTOMER

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Well, good morning and um we're ending the bulk of the conference on a really fun note um consumers take for granted all the technology that goes behind serving them in stores or in restaurants and today let's talk a little bit about um how that's evolved in the last few years. I mean jobs in restaurants and in retail have changed dramatically in the last few years because of expectations on the retail front. You know, the, the involvement of e-commerce has changed what store workers do on a daily basis and did in restaurants. So from each every point of view, what has been the biggest change in how technology is affecting the customer experience? Why, why don't we start with, with, uh, with Jason over there. Um I would say the biggest changes is really internally, which is not to think about the channels, um, but to really try and put the customer at the center. So, um, an example for us would be um omnichannel shopping. I mean, 80+% of in-store purchases start with an online experience. And so, you know, to be an aspirationally a world class omnichannel retailer, you really got to be thinking about that journey end to end and not just what happens in the four walls or not just what happens on your.com site. And over at McDonald's I would say that we find that uh customers are just more demanding than than ever and their expectations continue to raise and they raise much more quickly and the one way to meet that is through technology and our focus has been on how do you create the largest consumer platform which means you have to have the most efficient restaurant platform to to have. Those two pieces of meat, but I think the changing expectations and redefining what their needs are is, is what we're seeing most. Well, let's just follow up on that. So what do you think, uh, when you say their expectations have risen in what way is it, is it faster, uh, services that the ability to order more quickly and not have to wait to make your way through a ute and get to a cashier? What is it? I think if you think about our history, we started the, the drive-through from an innovation standpoint as a matter of fact, right here in Arizona in Sierra Vista. And from drive through it then became an expectation that I want more control in how I order, how I receive my food, how I pay so that was kiosk that was being able to pay digitally and today it's a desire for a little more one on one personal interaction. So if I'm gonna share my data with you through through your app, then what benefit do you provide me from a uh offers that are important to me, from understanding when I'm arriving to get my food. Uh, and having it prepared for me, so I, I think those are the changes in expectations. It's, it's a little more one on one expectation that if I give you something about me, you'll meet the needs I have. And over at Levi's, you, you guys are, um, you're not getting out of, uh, wholesale and department stores and things like that, but you want to sell a lot more through your own site and your own stores. um, how's that affecting? I mean, where's technology helping you in that way? Yeah, so. You know, Levi's by this point is more than 170 years old and as you point out, for, for most of our history, um we've sold men's jeans to um um to other businesses, to department stores and and other outlets. Um, and part of our strategy is what we call DTC first. So at this point, about half of our business is direct to consumer, the other half being wholesale. Wholesale is still massively important. We want to be excellent at that. We want to be a great partner with our, with our wholesale partners. Um, but for our DTC first ambition, um, we know that we got to be excellent. And I would say that. Probably one of the biggest things that's had to change internally is truly building that that focus on the consumer. So as Mason just pointed out, you know, really understanding who these people are, what they care about, um, when you're producing products, um, what is the complementary product that they might otherwise that they might also be interested in. It's really going deep and obsessing about the consumer in a way that when you're a wholesale. Uh, business, you're one step removed from the consumer. Um, and so for us, it really is about building, um, uh, that expertise around the consumer. And so how do you know that these changes are working but also worth it because you know there's uh there's so much there can be a tendency maybe to adopt implement technology changes, but how do you know that they're worth it? Um, well, we, we just, uh, actually just put a piece out just a couple of weeks ago that outlined that we, we've seen 12 consecutive quarters of double digit, um, growth in our DC in in our econ business, uh, and also in our our direct. Consumer channels. So you know if you're looking just through a financial lens we we'd say it's, it's certainly working, um, but there are other things that that we look at too. We have almost 40 million customers now or fans in our red tap program um around the world, um, and so that's another um uh uh way in which we think about is this strategy working or not, um, the extent to which customers want to have a relationship with Levi's. Um, the other thing we look at obsessively is is customer satisfaction, CAP, what's happening in the four walls, what's happening online, um, because sometimes, you know, the, the, the financial metrics themselves are a bit of a lagging indicator and CSAT tends to be something that can be an early warning signal where we've got opportunities. I would agree. I think Jason said it well, being obsessed about the consumer and understanding what they're telling you, so 1 in 4 transactions in the US is done through our my my uh McDonald's rewards app so it tells you if they're using the app, then it's, it's providing and meeting a need that they have. Equally 50% of those are through mobile order and pay. So it's, it's providing a convenience. I mean you look at it on the, the crew side and, and our, our restaurant team. So are we providing technology that makes it easier for them to do their work and reduces some of the cognitive load and CSAT customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction scores all are moving in the right direction? OK, well, that's good to hear because we titled this session something about wowing people with technology and I, as a consumer. You know, sometimes bells and whistles are fine, but I just want if I order something online and you say it's going to be delivered at such a date that it's actually that that's gonna happen, you don't need to make it Star Wars of of retail or you know um using a mobile app to order coffee or a meal, you know that it doesn't become mayhem when you arrive at the restaurant. So you know, do you think it, it, it's easy to lose sight of of. You know, maybe get blinded by all the shiny things and, and, and lose sight of what you really need. It it can be if you're, if you're not paying attention to what the customers telling you. So in our case, the number one reason why customers might be dissatisfied with their experience shopping Levi's is product availability. And so in response to that, one of the ways in which we use technology was we built an application called Back Pocket. um, and so this is an application, a tool that the stylists in the stores use. Um, to help the customer find the perfect pair of jeans that may not be in the four walls. With that, they have access to the consumer's profile, so they can understand what their fit preferences are and hopefully help them walk out the door happy. Either come back, pick the product up, or we'll ship it to them. One of the things that I think is especially neat about that particular application is that it was a tool for the stores that was built by the stores. So the product manager for the application, she's been with Levi's 13 years, 10 of those years she worked in the stores. So She knows intimately what the true needs are of the store. So in that scenario, it's not us building technology or being this, you know, the Star Wars of retail. It really is grounded in what is the consumer problem and what does the store need to solve that problem. I think whenever you bring any kind of technological solution for for a customer, you have to. Be very quick at understanding whether it meets the need, and we at times when we first introduced our app customers let us know where there was, um, uh, it made it too difficult, too many steps. If it took me too many steps to order a cup of coffee. Then we were making it too difficult, so we've had to go back and make some of those improvements and continually look at it. I'm gonna come to you all for some questions in a moment, but um, let's move a little bit away from the consumer and, and let's talk maybe about the aspects of technology that are not consumer facing but are just as important, your employees and things like inventory management and supply chain. Um, first of all, how do you, how do you get, uh, employees to embrace all these changes and, and, uh, and adopt them? Maybe I'll start, uh, so, um, I, I think first of all that the changes that we work on and develop are informed by what employees tell us are our pain points, so they're very clear in in communication with with crew and and restaurant managers when you're in the restaurants, but also through surveys where the pain points are in executing so we try to build solutions that that solve. All those pain points and I think one of the things we've learned over the last couple of years is that many of the omnichannel options that we've given consumers didn't necessarily connect well to the back of the house so you've you've heard us talk about this most efficient restaurant platform and that is getting it right in the back of the house to make it easier for a crew and managers to execute. Similar, I I think um there was a woman up earlier Rashby in the financial services and she talked about, I think 50, 40, 50% of their time was spent on their sales folks were spent on back office type tasks and very similar in in a retail environment. Um, you know, when you think about what we call our stylists, folks who work in the stores. Um, a large percentage of their time is focused on non-selling activity. And so how can you increase the amount of time that they're spending in front of customers. And so a really simple example would be, um, in our stores, everything is RFID enabled, so all of the genes all have RFID tags. And so, you know, if you're someone like me that comes and works a shift during the holiday season to try and help out. You know, I'm walking around with a with a mobile device able to find the right fit, the right size to get it out in front um so that we can serve the customers, um, but again, these are examples that are very focused on the key pain points in the store. Well, I'm glad you brought up working in the store because, uh, a few weeks ago I interviewed, uh, Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright who was here yesterday. And I asked him what's the thing you miss most now that you're CEO and he said, as a COO I was in stores 4 days out of 5, and now it's 1 day out of 5 if I'm lucky. I really, I'm afraid of losing sight of what is needed at the restaurant level. How often do you guys visit your stores and restaurants respectively and just to make sure that you know you're, you're, you're not removed from from the reality of what's needed. So I'm in our restaurants all of the time. I mean, we, we actually have a restaurant in our office building, so you're, you're always close to the consumer, what's happening. But I'm responsible for the 14,000 restaurants across the US, so being around the US in restaurants, talking to crew and managers, so 2 to 3 days a week is, is constantly, yes. I, I'm not responsible for our, our store network, but uh obviously support it and, you know, I'm a consumer. I, I love fashion, I love brands, I love um understanding consumers, so I'm out there every week, um. My local Levi store at University Village in Seattle. I was there last weekend and opened the door and the door was rattling and one of the screws was a little loose in the in the door handle and Sam, the manager and I were talking about, all right, let's get that fixed. Um, so yeah, love being in the stores. Um, are there any questions in the audience? Um, so when the mic comes to you, just introduce yourself, please and let us know who you're with. Thank you. Sonia Huffman La logistics, um, just curious as you're thinking about, um, two things one, the data you're receiving from customer surveys are you seeing that becoming a little a little less valuable to you and if it is, what are some of the. Other channels you're trying to get uh uh customer data from and to um have you found that you're aggregating so much data you almost don't know what to do with that data and what value it's actually adding to your business and how are you thinking about that? I'll maybe offer a quick anecdote, quite the opposite. I think supporting the digital and technology teams, it's very easy to gravitate to the behavioral data, how many transactions, you know, what's happening with the funnel, all that kind of stuff. Earlier this year, actually at the end of last year, we started seeing some anecdotes in the CSAT surveys about site speeded. And when we talk with the tech teams and we go through our operational meetings, we can see while the metrics are telling us that we're fine. And that went on for longer than I'd like to admit, probably a month or two where there was starting to be a groundswell of feedback in the CSAT surveys that we were having performance issues and yet the metrics were not telling us that we had performance issues. Long story short, we dug in with new observability stuff, found that there was indeed performance issues with the site, um, and we obviously then started acting on it, but that took longer than it ought to, and it was a lesson for us to remember that on the other end of this stuff, there's real people that are having real, um, you know, a real experience with you, whether it's good or bad. So for our case, I think that taught us that we got to pay a lot of attention to the CAT surveys in addition to the behavioral stuff. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I think the the consumer information we get customer information is invaluable and continuing to refine the questions so that you can really get underneath it I think becomes important. But then mixing it and comparing it to what you hear from your crew and then what you actually see in the way customers purchase because sometimes you might think they're saying this, but then you see it connects in a problem they're seeing and how they purchase something so bringing it all together I think it becomes even more important. Let's talk a little bit about the, well, you know, I have to get to a question about AI. So, um, the pace of technological change is accelerating and your employees have to keep up. Is are you using AI to um uh as a training tool so that to get people up to speed more quickly than before or what what is the role of AI in all this? Yeah, so I, I would say we're, we're learning and using AI in a lot of different, different places so we use it on the customer side as an engine on how do you, how you what you offer customers, uh, from a, a, um. And offer a promotion we use it on the crew and customer side uh if you think about we have a hiring app called McHire, so it takes a lot of the work off of the the crew and management team and hiring it does the recruiting, um, promotions follow up, and it has an AI assistant called Olivia and the AI assistant responds and answers questions so it takes some of the the work away from the restaurant teams and I think we know that AI. And automation is going to be the key to even tighter one on one relationships with the customers, but even more so on the cruise side. Yeah, and, and Levi's is really becoming a retailer much more than it ever was. So, so are you using AI to for client telling and and customer service and things like that? We are across the business. So if we think about kind of three broad constituents, we've got our consumers, we've got our corporate employees, then we've got our stylists in the case of stylists. We actually are rolling out today um and this was born out actually last year we did a hackathon where one of the folks built an application for the for the stylist where they could get information on denim education. Denim is obviously a very involved in personal purchase. Not everybody understands the fits or or why they should care about salvage, and so we saw an opportunity to help teach and and be an instructional tool for our stylist. So we Tested that last year real real quick test. Um, today we're rolling that out to more to 10 stores and we plan to roll that out to um to more stores. So the idea here is how can we supercharge their, their selling abilities um around denim. So on that note, um, thank you, Jason and Mason, that was, uh. Not on purpose by our our programming team, but I love it that the names rhyme, but just to show you how McDonald's and Levi's can really come together, not just at beautiful, uh, fortune events but also to make beautiful, um, aprons, uh, Levi's has made this for our friends at McDonald's, so. And I don't know, do you want to give a bit of a detail on, well, this is obviously a very beautiful apron. I hope you wear it, but one of the things I was telling these guys is I believe, and I'm going to sound like a pretend I'm an expert, but I think this is change stitch embroidery. So this is all hand stitched by one of our tailors, um, and they make really beautiful custom. Um, products and if you go into one of the Levi stores, um, there is a tailor shop and they can do really amazing things for you guys on your truck jackets or or your jeans. So clearly I'm gonna be the envy of my team when I get back. Hope so. That's very much. You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.