Fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, headquartered in College Park, Georgia, has ranked as the best fast-food chain for customer satisfaction in the country for 2018-2019, according to American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
ACSI, a company that provides data for customer evaluations in 46 industries, says it used data from interviews with 23,468 customers chosen at random and contacted via email between June 5, 2018 and May 27, 2019. It asked about categories pertaining to customer experience that include accuracy of food order, courtesy and helpfulness of staff, food quality (taste, temperature, freshness of ingredients) and restaurant layout and cleanliness.
Chick-fil-A ranked No. 1 for the fourth year in a row, according to ACSI, this year with a score of 86 out of 100. That’s one point lower than its score last year.
Panera Bread ranked No. 3 with a score of 81; Arby’s, Chipotle, Papa John’s and Pizza Hut all tied for No. 4 with a score of 80.
McDonald’s came in last on the list with a score of 69.
A category dubbed “all others” ranked No. 2 on the list with 82 points. “All others” encompasses the “total result for restaurants that don’t fall into those measured by the ACSI.” It is included in the ranking because, “in total, the data from all the other restaurants is statistically significant, but not for those individual restaurants to be reported on separately. So ACSI groups these smaller restaurants as ‘all others,'” according to a representative.
Overall, fast food customer experience was 1.3% lower than last year, according to the company. Only one category in 2018-19 did better than the year before: “variety of beverages on menu” scored 80 this year, one point up from last year.
“Website satisfaction” remained the same as last year with a score of 82. “Quality of mobile app” and “reliability of mobile app” (minimal down time, crashes, lags) are new this year.
All the other categories scored lower than last year.
Chick-fil-A did $10.46 billion in sales for 2018. Despite its popularity, Chick-fil-A has faced “criticism and boycotts for its donations to anti-LGBTQ groups and CEO Dan Cathy’s public comments opposing gay marriage,” CNBC previously reported.
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