Chick-fil-A tops list of best service in fast food, McDonald’s dead last
A new survey says Chick-fil-A has the best service in fast food — and McDonald’s is the absolute worst.
According to 24/7 Wall St., Chick-fil-A has the best customer service out of 17 fast food companies and McDonald’s has the worst. Some of the places on the list are classic fast food joints for complete meals — KFC, Chipotle, Little Caesars — and others occupy that more contested ground of “a coffee chain that sells food items too.”
24/7 Wall St. pulls its numbers from the 2017 American Customer Service Satisfaction Index (ACSI). In addition to the cold hard ranking, the outlet reports that customers were just as satisfied with fast food service, generally, as years past, and, because of lower full-service restaurant scores, did better than their tablecloth counterparts.
The 17 restaurants come from the ACSI and the 2017 ranking is as follows:
- Chick-fil-A
- Panera Bread
- Papa John’s
- Subway
- Arby’s
- Dunkin’ Donuts
- Chipotle
- Little Caesars Pizza
- KFC
- Domino’s
- Starbucks
- Burger King
- Wendy’s
- Taco Bell
- Pizza Hut
- Jack in the Box
- McDonald’s
To score the restaurants, ACSI interviewed 5,557 customers at random to gather opinions about staff courtesy, helpfulness, table service speed, order accuracy, restaurant layout and cleaniness, beverage and food quality and website quality.
24/7 Wall St. reports that Chick-fil-A scored well — 87 to be exact — for “its devotion to customers’ needs” and willingness to respond to requests. Panera, which placed second, also scored well by listening to customers and removing artificial colors, flavors and sweeteners as well as introducing new ordering technologies.
Fittingly, Dunkin’ Donuts, which came in sixth scored an “industry average” of 79, which makes sense because everything about Dunkin’ Donuts is average.
McDonald’s is the lowest chain on the list with a score of 69, though 24/7 Wall St. provides no insight as to why. Still, the chain is wildly profitable. Traffic and sales are both up thanks in part to the introduction of cheap drinks, fancy burgers and all-day breakfast.
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What do you think? What fast food chain has the best service in your experience?