Addressing Issues at McDonalds

McDonald's U.K. has experienced significant losses in the past years. While they recently have started to turn around their profit trends, there is still more the organization can do to exceed expectations. Improving their restaurants, customer service, and healthy options are all actions McDonald's can take to continue to improve their positive trend.

1. Identify the problems confronting McDonald's U. K. and list them from the most to the least critical. For each problem identified, explain your reasoning.

The most critical problem that McDonald's U.K., and McDonald's in general, is the negative press they are getting from documentaries that exploit the lack of health in their menu. While they have done what they can to maintain their staple items they are famous for as they add more nutritious options, it's likely that they haven't gained back the profits they lost. With vegetarianism and green/raw diets on the rise, McDonald's could continue to plateau in sales if they don't losing them again. The documentary "Super- Size Me" was a significant strike against McDonald's as it gives compelling data against the food they provide.

Another problem confronting McDonald's is the state of their restaurants in the U.K. "Starbucks has made McDonald's outlets look sterile and out of date." (Cateora, 2009). Their restaurants were in need of updating. Starbucks and other restaurants have a trendy feel with modern, more inviting environments. Updating their storefronts could bring more customers in.

To add to their issues, the service at McDonald's U.K. has been "slipping". To keep customers coming back, it is critical to provide excellent customer service. If your clients are unhappy not only will they not come back, they will tell their friends to not come back further diminishing company profits.

2. Some problems you identified in Question 1 may require a "quick fix" in the short run, while others may require a major shift in company strategy. Assuming that you cannot focus on all the problems at once, suggest the order in which the issues should be addressed and suggest an approach to solving each problem.

Taking care of their lack of quality customer service is a great first step to begin turning things around for McDonalds. Providing training for new and existing employees around how they expect them to treat customers is an excellent first step to take. Accepting responsibility when there are customer service problems and following through on disciplinary actions prove to both the customer and employee that McDonald's takes their customer service very seriously. I had a personal experience with bad customer service which has caused me to avoid McDonald's for a few years. My family and I waited 30 minutes for food before we ended up leaving the restaurant. No refunds were offered. It's a small town, so we were sent a form letter of apology and a $1 off coupon for our next visit. Irate, we contacted a regional office and were not treated any better. Any corporation needs to be more attentive to customer complaints if they want to keep them. Installing new policies